A friend of mine living on North Stradbroke Island has sent me this note: “Straddie birdwatchers are puzzled by the almost complete disappearance of white cheeked honey eaters for the past two season and this year also brown honey eaters and silver eyes. Have you heard any similar stories?” Presumably this is related to flowering cycles, but in many years of visiting North Stradbroke Island, I have never NOT seen White-cheeked and Brown honeyeaters in abundance. Certainly on the Sunshine Coast, both species are as numerous as always. Any thoughts on this? Greg ===============================
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Hi Greg, An interesting puzzle. I can only note that honeyeaters can have very strange reactions to islands and they seem very averse to crossing water. In Townsville there are about 35 species of honeyeater (including vagrants). On Magnetic Island there are only 3 (Brown-backed, Dusky and Helmeted Friarbird). It is 4 km from Pallarenda on the mainland where at least 12 honeyeaters regularly occur in the same kinds of habitats present on Magnetic Island. The migratory Noisy and Little Friarbirds and Yellow-faced Honeyeater never take on the treacherous 4 km of calm tropical bay. Brown Honeyeater was supposedly scarce in Townsville until the Ross River Dam completed in ’74 turned ‘Mt Isa by the sea’ into the palm tree and green lawn-studded “Capital of North Qld’ we see today. Now there seems to be both resident and irruptive individuals of this locally abundant species. Still, that nasty 4 km of water has stopped them reaching land’s end. Even Varied and Mangrove honeyeaters don’t cross the gulf. North Stradbroke’s a little different, with all those mangroves and islands at the south end forming a sort of tree bridge. There’s no more than 400-500 m of open water maybe. Quite a few more honeyeaters occur there than do on Still, I think times might be very desperate for the honeyeaters to leave. If the honeyeaters did leave or if they died off, reestablishment could be quite a slow process. Perhaps this would occur through breeding up of the remnant populations before recolonisation across the water? Silvereyes don’t mind flying over water, of course.