Mistletoebird foraging on ground
By Birding-Aus, on September 3rd, 2013
A few days ago I observed a Mistletoebird (male) fly from a tree ad perch on a barbed wire fence. It then flew to the ground and spent the next ten minutes foraging. The ground as bare earth with scattered clumps of grass grazed very low. it was picking things up, but even with binoculars I couldn’t see what these were. After it left I examined the ground but didn’t get any clues. I have never seen a Mistletoebird foraging on the ground before, is this common. Any idea of what it might have been picking up? — John Leonard =============================== 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 ===============================
Reading the HANZAB species account indicates that it isn’t common to feed on the ground with only one reference cited as far as I could see. They do eat insects so perhaps in the 10 minutes it cleaned up the prey, or the remaining prey scarpered, in either case leaving nothing for you to find? Martin On 3 September 2013 12:58, John Leonard < calyptorhynchus@gmail.com> wrote: — Martin Butterfield http://franmart.blogspot.com.au/ =============================== To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) http://birding-aus.org ===============================