N is for New Holland Honeyeater and more new honeyeaters

 

yellow, black and white bird with long beak

The New Holland Honeyeaters remind me of overgrown mosquitoes. They fly around at high speeds and have that very sharp beak. Luckily it gets used for obtaining nectar vs stabbing innocent humans. Around here, it isn't the mosquitoes but the ticks that give me grief! 

We found brown and white cheeked honeyeaters where we have been housesitting in Swansea. 
The white cheeked one is similar but different to the New Holland ones (bigger and different white patterns)
yellow, black and white bird with more of a diamond pattern on head

The brown honeyeater seems to have gotten the short end of the stick with the naming convention and doesn't seem all brown to me! They do have a lovely song!

singing bird with brown head and yellow green wings
But, I guess the brown honeyeater needs to be differentiated from the brown headed honeyeater we saw when we were visiting Rylstone. 
brown headed bird with yellow eye ring

There are still more but figure you are running out of interest at this point. 

We had an international netflix party and watched K Pop Demon Hunters synchronously with the kids earlier today. Fun to just connect in that way. The music was good; plot as expected. We did decide we knew that blue cat. 

I spent the evening resorting and repacking for the trip to Seoul. Not the least of which was managing my meds for the next few days and then for travel. My doc here gave me two different concentrations of warfarin - that will take me a bit of getting used to so probably really good that set out meds for 2 weeks. Less thinking involved. 

We finished up at Swansea on Monday and trekked back toward Sydney. As I think I mentioned, a classmate of Scott's will be letting us hang out at her place. She is an amazing person - went to med school after vet school and now works as an ER doc. Makes me exhausted just to think about it. 

We did stop at a few parks along the way. Apparently sacred kingfishers use old termite nests for their nests. This one seemed to think it was a lot of work for those openings. 
blue backed bird in opening to large termite mound in tree

blue and cream colored bird with large beak on branch


The partner was sitting on a branch a bit further away, supervising
cream and blue colored bird with large beak on branch


We also saw a bunch of female versions of our bird friends. Those take a bit more searching out on the computer as they often look little like their male counterparts. For instance, the satin bowerbird female is not black satin at all
larger bird with purple eye and horizontal lines on belly walking along branch

FWIW, it could be a juvenile male or a female. Still, only adult males get top billing. 

For now, it is time to ride off into the sunset and get more things done before I leave the area!

small bird straddling a banksia flower



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