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Inspiring and Supporting Photographers of Australian Birds

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Spotted Pardalote

Spotted Pardalote (Image ID 46722)
Photographed byMichael Hamel-Green on Thu 17th Jun, 2021 and uploaded on Fri 18th Jun, 2021 .
Resolution1800x961
Viewed272
ID46722
CommentThe big and the little of it. One of Australia’s tiniest birds, a Spotted Pardalote, investigating insect life on a huge weathered log, long felled in the wooded area besides Royal Park Wetlands. The absence of a yellow throat but yellow spots on the crown suggest this is a female, belonging to the Punctatis subspecies commonly found in southeast and eastern regions. There is quite a flock of them at Royal Park, burrowing to make their nests in the nearby rail embankment. John Gould, writing in the 1850s, was amazed at their extraordinary nesting skills and strategies: “I have been fortunate enough to discover many of the nests of this species but they are most difficult to detect…How so neat a structure as is the nest of the Spotted Pardalote should be constructed at the end of a hole where no light can possibly enter is beyond our comprehension and is one of those wonderful results of instinct so often presented to our notice in the history of the animal creation” (Vol.2). No doubt a very diminutive bird like a pardalote must needs take extra care to hide its offspring from the attention of many sorts of predator, whether raptors, owls, thieving corvids, prowling cats, or foxes (and I have seen and photographed a large red fox in this very vicinity).
EquipmentNikon Z7ii, Nikon 300mm PF f4, TC1.7, focal length 500mm
ISO 1600
1/400th f6.7
Monopod
LocationRoyal Park Wetlands, Parkville, Victoria
Keywordsfemale, adult
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