Dollarbirds – Feeding Note

I was at Irrawong Reserve, Warriewood, Sydney NSW. last Sunday am for a Pittwater Natural Heritage Assoc. guided birdwalk. There is quite a cicada hatch at present, so seeing the birds move was about the only option at times because you sure couldn’t hear ’em. The Dollarbirds had arrived and were in residence as expected and several pairs were showing well. Now one often finds discarded cicadas with the just the head, legs and wings remaining and minus the soft parts – and I had assumed this may be the feeding technique for Dollarbirds as well as the other birds that take them – so I watched a couple of acrobatic “catches” with interest. On returning to a perch with a cicada, on all occasions the catch was turned and swallowed whole, head first. The “Broad-billed Roller” tag seems very appropriate – they were large cicadas! Graeme Stevens =============================== 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 ===============================