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| A male Grey Butcherbird in bum crack mode |
Greetings fellow Gympie Nats. I was tempted to go full arthropod on my first posting, but decided that a good bird would be more appropriate, not in the William Tecumseh Sherman sense, but a thoroughly content Grey Butcherbird soaking up the Sunshine Coast Hinterlands sunshine while exposing his uropygial glands. I've seen similar corpse-like sprawls in Brush Turkeys and Crested Pigeons, so this 'passive anting' behaviour seems to be widespread in birds (no ants were present).
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| The same bird when hunger overcomes sun-worship |
Not that birds and arthropods don't go together: without arthropods there would be no birds. Butcherbirds, however, can be pretty hard on the local large arthropods.
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| I moved this female huntsman (Holconia immanis) from my home to the garden. Alas she soon became Butcherbird food. |
