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‘Diamond birds’ find their voice

May 7, 2022 Don Knowler

The song of the spotted pardalote is pinging around the neighbourhoods this month. It’s the same every autumn and winter when these stunning little birds find their voice.
The pardalotes’ two-note “ping-ping” or “pee-pee” can be heard from every corner of Hobart, my last encounter with them in the gums at the Dunn St car park in the CBD.
Autumn is a good time to learn birdsong simply because there are fewer songs – the migrant songsters have departed for the mainland. In the spotted pardalote’s case, they do not have to compete with a slightly larger, more aggressive relative, the striated pardalote.
The striated pardalotes migrate to northern NSW each autumn, leaving the spotted pardalotes to brave the Tasmanian winter on their own.
The “spotties”, as they are affectionately known to birdwatchers, are the most beautiful of the three pardalotes found in Tasmania – the forty-spotted pardalote being the third. Their heads and backs are slate-grey, their chests yellow and there are crimson feathers in the tail. And they are dotted with silver spots, giving the birds another name, “diamond birds”.
At nine centimetres in length, the “spotties” are among the smallest of Australian birds and for this reason they are difficult to observe, spending most of their time in the canopy, feeding on tiny insects.
In spring, though, they come to ground to nest in tree cavities and holes in the ground, dug into grassy banks or even into piles of leaf litter and grass cuttings from mown lawns.
While the striated pardalotes are away in the north, here in Tasmania the “spotties” clearly make hay while the sun shines. They are not the only ones to take advantage of the gaps in the spring and summer soundscape.
In my experience the yellow-throated honeyeaters become more vocal, but I suspect this is to make their presence known under an invasion of another form of migrant, the ones that instead of going interstate merely move from higher to lower ground.
The yellowthroats have to compete with crescent honeyeaters and eastern spinebills in suburban gardens. The New Holland honeyeaters, too, have to raise their voices to declare ownership of territory.
Bird songs can be hard to learn but it helps to attach sounds known to the human ear in the learning process. The easiest song to identify is the “Joe Whitty” made by the grey shrike-thrush, another resident species that has to compete with the winter invaders from higher ground.
The Joe Whitty raises the tempo to such an extent that its song becomes the dominant sound of winter, replacing the far-carrying songs of the cuckoos in summer.
On a walk in the foothills of kunanyi/Mt Wellington on the first day of May, a golden whistler was also in full voice – another species hitting the high notes while it had the run of the woods.

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