A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
Anthochaera carunculata
35 cm long grey-brown honeyeater with red eyes, red wattles on the neck, white streaks on the chest and belly, which reveals a bright yellow patch towards the tail, darker but streaky back. Makes a very distinctive range of cackling calls and threatening cracking noises when trying to intimidate other birds or animals.
Mostly open eucalyptus forests of south-eastern Australia.
Photo #2 shows two juveniles, offspring of the adult in #1. They are all against Grevillea Robusta.
Spotted on Jan 10, 2012
Submitted on Jan 12, 2012
4 Comments
That sounds like youngsters to me. They've had a fantastic season this year. We are watching 3 generations just this summer and I'm almost certain the first set of offspring were helping feed the second set for a while (which would be amazing if true). It's now getting to the 'let's all just fight' stage. So noisy.
I thought that myself, but there was no other signs pointing to them being immature. They were feeding themselves, being quiet and of adult size. I'll try get a photo next time.
Are you sure they weren't just immature ones?
They don't get their wattles for a while. (Like the babies in pic 2)
And they spend most of their day making an incessant annoying noise to beg nearby parents (and maybe siblings?) for food.
We had 2 wattlebirds in the garden today, normally get this species but the ones today did not have the red marking. Couldn't get a picture :(