The Tongue of the Noisy Miner

No, it's not a dirty old folk song—it's a bird:

The Noisy Miner is a bold and curious bird. It is identified by its mostly grey body and black crown and cheeks. The bill is yellow, as are the legs and the naked skin behind the eye. The name is well suited as the common calls are uttered repeatedly by the members of the colony.

These birds are about the size of robins, are all over eastern Australia, and are the most commonly seen bird around our home in Collaroy. But for all the times I've seen them, there was something I didn't know about them until the other day, when one landed on the veranda where I was sitting, and began hopping around our potted grevillea. Here's a photo Christine took of one on said plant (click and click again for real closeup):

It started sticking its beak into every flower on the plant, and appeared to be drinking nectar from them, like a hummingbird. I don't know if I've ever seen a bird other than a hummingbird do that. Well, turns out it was drinking the nectar. The noisy miner is a honeyeater:

The honeyeaters are a large and diverse family of small to medium sized birds most common in Australia and New Guinea, but also found in New Zealand, the Pacific islands as far east as Samoa and Tonga, and the islands to the north and west of New Guinea known as Wallacea. Bali, on the other side of the Wallace Line, has a single species.

Honeyeaters live on a variety of foods, such as fruits, seeds, and insects, but they are characterized by the fact that they all eat flower nectar. And like other nectar-eaters, such as bees, honeyeaters are in fact responsible for pollinating many types of plants. A cool thing about this is that flowers so-pollinated have developed special adaptions that both attract the birds and make it easy for them to access their nectar. These are ornithophilous—literally "bird-loving"—flowers. They usually brightly colored, often red, as sight is obviously highly developed in birds; they're often odorless, as birds are not good smellers; they produce a lot of nectar; and have cavities which hold enough nectar to make it worth a bird's while to feed on it. Characteristics all found in our grevillea—which will continue to attract miners for us. (This is all part of the larger and very fascinating story of pollination syndrome, I'm just learning. I'll have to look into that more in the future!)

The birds have developed their own adaptations, as well. Honeyeaters have curved beaks, often very long, and long, extendable, brush-tipped tongues that are good for lapping up nectar. And some have developed the ability to hover, like the hummingbirds, which makes feeding on flower nectar a lot easier. But alas, not the honeyeater. He jumps and flops around on our grevillea like he might be trying to kill it, but always ends up getting what he's after.

• Miners are called "miners" because early settlers thought they looked like a bird known from Asia, the myna, that name coming from a Hindi word. Myna's are not related to miners, and are a huge problem in Australia: these very aggressive birds—they're in the starling family—were introduced here in the mid-1800s (by idiots) to fight insects, and have since taken over huge areas once occupied by many other bird species.

• I've also just learned another fascinating thing: Although hummingbirds are very similar to honeyeaters (and to the other type of nectar-eating birds, the sunbirds), right down to their brush-tipped tongues—they are not related. They are in fact classic examples of convergent evolution. Nature so demanded they exist that they made extras.

Lorikeets on the Veranda

Sitting at my desk just now, a pair of lorikeets that have judged us easy marks (and who Christine has named Sadie and June) landed on the hand rail of the veranda, just some eight feet from me. One positioned itself directly in front of the open door, cocked its head sideways, one eye focused on me, and screeched. Several times. Loudly. It was, of course, rewarded for this obnoxiousness.

Here's the "Naming of the Lorkeets" video:



And a closeup:

America in Australia

So I'm on the bus in Sydney the other day and America's "Sister Golden Hair Surprise"—which is not my drag name—is playing. Next song: Billy Joel's "You May Be Right." On the TV I can watch Rosanne, Golden Girls, Everybody Hates Raymond, Diagnosis: Murder, House, Sh*t My Dad Says (which I thought was a show about a guy who's father says "shit" a lot)… Colonel Sanders is a god here. McDonald's - of course it's here. (Burger King too, but they're disguised as Hungry Jack's.) Jack Daniels is considered cool. I got a jar of "Newman's Own" spaghetti sauce in the supermarket the other day.

There are times I wonder where I moved to when I left America. America's younger cousin, sometimes it feels, with stranger animals. Australians will hate that, of course, the way Americans would hate some fer-ner coming to their country and saying it seemed like a younger cousin of Sweden, or something. (Which it is!)

I'll be writing more about this as the months pass. I've got a lot to learn about Australia, obviously.

Happy New Years Prawns

If you got it in your mind one day to enter the words "happy new year prawns" into the Google image machine, you would find that this most important and world-changing blog currently owns the first two entries.

I know this because my site meter tells me that someone in Israel googled "happy new years prawns" and ended up here. (It may be a euphemism. I do not know. I swear.)

Anyhoo, someone tell Sneezing Panda: I have conquered the internet. It is mine.

The Kangaroo Claw

This is a photo of a back paw of a kangaroo (via):

Consider that kangaroos' back legs are unbelievably powerful—they can jump an eight-foot fence from a standstill, and can leap nearly thirty feet while running—and that they can stand over eight feet tall while in fighting position. That claw could rip your guts out.

Now here's a video of a kangaroo attack.

My First Blue Bottle Jellyfish Sting

So I was trying to catch beach worms the other day - more on that later - when Christine noticed the delicate tentacles of a dreaded blue bottle jellyfish around my legs.

Bluebottle tentacles will cause a sharp, painful sting if they are touched, which is aggravated by rubbing the area. Intense pain may be felt from a few minutes to many hours and develops into a dull ache which then spreads to surrounding joints. The affected area develops a red line with small white lesions. In severe cases blisters and weals looking like a string of beads may appear. Victims may exhibit signs of shock. Children, asthmatics and people with allergies can be badly affected and many cases of respiratory distress have been reported in Australia.

I took photos of blue bottles for this post. One, with one long tentacle displayed:

I must have gotten a baby, or something, because it was just a mild, annoying sting—although it did last for a couple hours. Here are the marks left on my ankle:

But let's look further into the blue bottle jellyfish—which isn't a jellyfish. And it's not one animal. A blue bottle is four different kinds of creatures, known as zooids, living together to form what seems to be one creature. One kind makes up the flotation bladder, another does the hunting, another still the eating and digesting, and yet another takes care of reproduction. (Why do I always have to do the digesting and Francis always gets reproduction? It's NOT. FAIR!) I'm not kidding:

The Bluebottle or Portuguese Man-of-War is not a single animal but a colony of four kinds of highly modified individuals (polyps). The polyps are dependent on one another for survival.

The float (pneumatophore) is a single individual and supports the rest of the colony. The tentacles (dactylozooids) are polyps concerned with the detection and capture of food and convey their prey to the digestive polyps (gastrozooids). Reproduction is carried out by the gonozooids, another type of polyp.

I'll be doing more on these fascinating creatures in the future, and on zooids in general, in the future.

The Changing Middle East -> U.S.

It just occurred to me: If a good chunk of the Middle East makes a dramatic move toward democracy over the next few months or years, the U.S. is going to have to change dramatically, too.

Just saying.