Part Eight – Honey-eaters: a miscellaneous lot

Mid Dry Season and this cold weather period is known as "Wurrgeng", bringing with it a profusion of flowers and a plethora of honey-eaters – large, small, colourful, drab. They are searching for sweetness but also any accessible moisture. In the early morning, I see a small red-headed honey-eater flit in to sip from the water beads left on the banana leaves by the sprinkler, his brilliant scarlet head and black wings contrasting with the pale green of the young banana fronds. This small bird lives in coastal forests and woodland, and, although a bit larger, is often mistaken for the scarlet honey-eater which has a red breast and a white under-belly. Another look-alike is the mistletoe bird which does not have the long beak of the honey-eaters.

Other small and large tropical honey-eaters drop into my garden as plants become established, making my yard more inviting to small animals. The rather drab, most common, dusky and rufous birds contrast quite spectacularly with the larger friarbirds and blue-faced honey-eaters. While the smaller birds dart nervously from flower to greenery seeking sweet nectar, the larger ones make use of the rapidly denuding branches of the "green ant" tree. Hopefully they will assist in ridding me of the green ants still stubbornly hanging on in the defoliating tree.

Nearby, an umbrella tree with its long, red, nectar-dripping spikes pointing ever upwards, attracts a harem of screeching red-collared rainbow lorikeets. These seemingly bad-tempered quarrelsome birds are never quiet or still for more than one second at a time; their constant noise and movement are designed to discourage other honey-eaters from participating in the excess of the sticky sweetness produced by the umbrella tree blossoms.

As the lorikeets' loud chattering attracts more of their ilk, increasing the noise ratio to a crescendo of raucous pandemonium, other honey-eaters creep silently around the edge of the lorikeet flock, until, on some unheard command, the birds depart with a single, concerted "whoosh", leaving blessed golden silence in their wake.

Next month: Doves – the good and the bad.