Monday, December 26, 2011

Honeyeater conned by Koel

Blue-faced Honeyeater (Entomyzon cyanotis) about to feed caterpillar to the cuckoo planted on  it, an Eastern Koel (Eudynamys scolopaceus), near Tyto wetlands.


Young Koels demand food for weeks until even the most dutiful parents turn their backs on the greedy offspring. 
Click pix to enlarge

4 comments:

Denis Wilson said...

Yeah, the unlucky duped parents work very hard, don't they?
Cheers
Denis

Char Paul said...

That's just beautiful~ sharing is caring ~:-)

I know the lil sunbirds that nest in my den are very hard working too, those chicks just go on and on!

Snail said...

That poor honeyeater looks quite frazzled by the effort. The only thing worse than a koel would be a channel-billed cuckoo!

I expect there are conversations some evenings where the parents blame the chick for their loss of head feathers.

Tyto Tony said...

Hi Denis: Very, v hard.

Hi PSI: The sharing is so hard-wired the caring is involuntary: who do we praise?

Hi Bronwyn: "Face it, my blue-faced partner, I suspect we've been victim of a bare-faced robbery."?

Head up for dragonfly, head off for fish head . . .

One moment it's dragonfly trying to dance on White-bellied Sea-Eagle's head, the next it's all go for fisher's discarded fis...