There’s hidden beauty in the bottlebrushes. The crescent honeyeaters have arrived from their breeding grounds in the high country and the only evidence of their presence in my garden is the familiar “e-gypt, e-gypt” call I start to hear from early autumn.
The “crescents” usually tend to be eclipsed by the more aggressive new holland honeyeaters in the suburban environment. and they can easily be mistaken for the bigger family member because they both show striking yellow feathers in their plumage.
The less showy crescents, however, keep their yellow quills largely under wraps, as though hiding a treasure they do not want to reveal.
You have to observe them closely to see those flashes of precious gold tucked into their wing feathers. The crescents are one of the smallest of the honeyeaters and tend to hide in thick canopy or dense bushes, like the yellow bottlebrushes.
With a little patience, homing on that tinny ‘‘e-gypt” call’, I soon find them, climbing through the tangled branches in the hunt for tiny protein-rich insects, when pollen and nectar is in short supply at the end of the flowering season.
The crescents are part of the passing parade of nature that has largely gone unnoticed in our suburbs until recent years when the public suddenly became aware of the rich variety of not just birdlife, but mammals, reptiles and colourful insects like yellow admiral butterflies that we literally have on our doorstep.
Initiatives like the Backyard Bird Count have in the past decade introduced the public to the wonders and mysteries of nature close at hand, and we can thank the Covid pandemic five years ago for also opening our eyes to these natural history possibilities.
During the pandemic lockdowns residents of towns and cities turned their attention to their own gardens. Even people not particularly interested in, or aware of, nature suddenly found pleasant distractions there from the misery of confinement. It is truly amazing what can be viewed from the lounge or kitchen window, especially if a garden is rich in flowers and shrubs.
The crescent honeyeater represents such a treat. It is not as striking as many of the other garden birds like superb fairywrens and scarlet robins, but it carries a subtly of colour and markings.
It gets its name from the two parallel crescent-shaped markings on its chest. These are charcoal-black, on a light grey background. The head and back are a darker shade of grey and, side on, the golden colour spreads in a band through the wings and also shows up in the tail.
Although the crescents can be seen in Hobart’s suburbs year-round, the bulk of the population moves to kunanyi/Mt Wellington in spring. Who needs a calendar of the seasons when we have the crescents to signal the coming of winter, and the approach of summer later in the year?