Hi Philip, Back in October 1985, I was at Heron Island (North Queensland). The local Buff-banded Rail population was just about flightless but very tame and confiding, hence very easily observed. One day at high tide only about a metre of beach was exposed and I was watching a Sandpiper – Terek from memory – which made a dash and captured one of the fast-moving crabs on the beach. No sooner had it done so, than a Buff-banded Rail rushed out of the undergrowth behind the beach and snatched the crab from the Sandpiper, then rushed back into the bushes. I would class this as active piracy.
The Rails were in and out of the cabins all the time, and regularly ran about in the dining-room in search of scraps. I understand that birds are no longer permitted in the dining-room at Heron Island, on hygienic grounds. Capricorn Silvereyes were also in there at meal-times; lids had to be kept on milk-jugs and sugar-bowls at all times. We also had visits from a white Reef Egret, which accepted chicken and fish from diners’ hands.
Anthea Fleming
On 25/01/2013 3:45 PM, Philip Veerman wrote: > Today I was at the the rapidly disappearing (as in drying out) Kelly’s > Swamp, in Canberra, one of a small number of local places where many people > have over the past few weeks enjoyed watching all the crakes etc, from which > I will extract this bit of text to the cog list: > > One Coot was pecking with no great enthusiasm at what might be the decaying > remains of a fish (or just some biological flotsam). Another Coot standing a > few cm away. The Buff-banded Rail approached between them and began picking > little bits of whatever it was, out of the Coot’s beak. This went on about > 30 seconds. As in I think 3 times the Coot bent down to shake off a little > bit of whatever it was and when it lifted its head the Buff-banded Rail > pecked at the bits hanging out the side of the Coot’s beak. The Coots didn’t > seem overly concerned and walked off. The Buff-banded Rail continued > picking over this bit of whatever it is for another 30 seconds then wandered > off. Over the next 10 minutes or so they and several of the Crakes walked > past this bit of whatever again and were not interested. They were actively > feeding on many other things. > > From one of the hides the highest simultaneous count I got to was 8 Spotted > Crakes (at least 4 or 5 in view for the whole 30 minutes or so that I was > there), as well as two Spotless Crakes and one Buff-banded Rail seen so many > times and in so many places that I suspect there were 2 or 3. The Spotless > Crakes spend much shorter time out in the open mud than the others and one > ran back into the reeds when a Willie Wagtail flew over it. > > Philip > > =============================== > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, > send the message: > unsubscribe > (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) > to: birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au > > http://birding-aus.org > =============================== >
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