Close but no cigar

This blogsite was borne out of a project to record and report on fauna returning to the King Parrot and Strath Creek valleys after the 2009 bushfires. To this day Macwake makes sure that we keep to the original vision by only publishing posts of fauna from those valleys.

Recently I observed a distinctive looking bird doing acrobatics in a eucalypt tree. It turned out to be a juvenile Blue-faced Honeyeater (Entomyzon cyanotis), pictured below.

The green patch around its eye is bare skin and is indicative of the age of the bird. Young birds have yellow skin around the eye which turns green after six months. This skin turns blue after about 16 months and what a colour it is (see photo left). Blue is such a rare colour in nature and this hue is stunning.

This honeyeater is found in open woodlands north of the Great Dividing Range all the way up to New Guinea. These photos were taken just north of the Strathbogies and therefore fall outside the range of fauna reported on this blogsite. Close, but no cigar.

Forget that you read any of this.