Last night (about midnight) we were watching TV in my lounge room with the curtains of the large window to the back deck open. There had just been a close thunderstorm with periods of heavy rain. Something fluttered to the window and slid to the deck. We assumed it was a large moth, as often happens.
Next it seemed stuck to the flywire netting of the flywire door in the middle panel and it was obviously not a moth. I realised it was a small bird.
The cat, Alan and I all suddenly became very interested. Alan identified the bird as a Brown Thornbill. It continued this activity at the window, occasionally resting on the flywire screen for about 10 minutes. We assumed it was after the insects attracted to the light. It may have been disturbed from its roost by the thunderstorm and sought shelter on the deck.
Has anyone seen this behaviour before? It was new to us.
Elizabeth Shaw & Alan Crawford (visiting) Phillip Island Victoria ============================== 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
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Hi Elizabeth, I don’t have thornbills in my garden but recently I was disappointed by the number of moths coming to my house window where I, each night, attract them with a light and photograph & record them (~ 255 identified Lepidoptera sp for my garden list, many more to ID. Somewhat larger no. than bird sp!) I had been hearing shuffling noises in adjacent trees and eventually sprung the blighters at it – a pair of Red Wattle Birds were hawking moths near the window and taking them off the glass. They would even sit about a metre from me watching while I was at the window. I have often seen these birds hawking moths in tree tops in the late evening glow, I had not before seen them active late at night. They had two large fledged, still dependent young at the time.
Wendy Coburg (Melbourne)