A pair of grey shrike-thrushes have been captivating a reader with their sweet singing. My email and telephone runs hot in the spring with readers reporting bird sightings, and the email from Kingston certainly struck a chord.
I, too, revel in the rich, far-carrying song of the shrike-thrush, in which the birds seem to be calling out the name “Joe Whitty’’. For this reason, the grey shrike-thrush is also known as the Joe Whitty in Tasmania, even by people who know the song but have never actually seen the bird.
The shrike-thrush is not hard to find, especially in spring when it tends to enter suburban gardens in the hunt for food.
The Kingston reader said the Joe Whitty pair sat in her car port and their sweet song not only brought joy to her ears but attracted a New Holland which “always follows the shrike-thrushes wherever they go and sits up really close and watches them”.
The reader was curious about this behaviour and asked why it occurred.
I’m afraid I had to be the bearer of bad tidings. The honeyeater might have appeared to be revelling in the shrike-thrush song but the reality was far from this notion of avian goodwill and fraternity.
In truth, the beautiful song of the shrike-thrush belies its ruthlessness, especially at this time of year when it goes in search of the eggs and young of garden birds.
As I told the reader, the New Holland honeyeater would be well aware of the shrike-thrushes’ reputation and was on guard for the menace. No doubt it mixed its close attention to the shrike-thrushes with its trilling alarm call to warn all the other birds in the neighbourhood that there was danger lurking in the car port and beyond.
The New Holland honeyeaters living in my garden year-round have been busy in recent months warning of the presence of kookaburras which, like the shrike-thrushes, always seem to turn up in spring to prey on the nesting bounty.
I call the honeyeaters the “neighbourhood watch” and all birds know their strident, pipping alarm cries. Most birds, in fact, can identify the alarm calls of other species so there might after all be a fraternity of garden birds like blue wrens and scarlet robins which are not predators themselves, if the insects which make up their diet are excluded.
Grey shrike-thrushes have been strangely absent from my garden this spring. The honeyeaters are happy, but I miss seeing them. Although the shrike-thrushes might not be as stunning in plumage as some of the other familiar birds, they carry a subtle livery, mixing light-grey on the breast with a darker grey back, tinged with brown. The species carries a fearsome hooked beak, like the shrikes of Europe from which they get their name.
Out of the breeding season, the shrike-thrush survives on a diet of insects and skinks, and will also eat seeds, fruit and nuts in the autumn.
A clue to the shrike-thrush’s wonderful song can be found in its Latin name, Colluricincla harmonica.