[Pollinator] Fwd: Nectar

[Peter Bernhardt]

John Kelly is an old friend of mine, born and raised in Victoria,
Australia.  he now lives in Western Australia.  Here's an old observation
he has on native nectar-feeding birds visiting non-native flowers in a
garden on the Mornington Penninsula.  The red wattle bird is among the
largest member of the Meliphagidae in Australia (about the size of a purple
grackle).  Thornbills belong to the Acanthizidae and are about the size of
a chickadee.  From John's description it sounds like trumpet lily nectar
may ferment or maybe it contains too much sucrose and the thornbills have
trouble digesting it?.

Peter

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John And Rhonda <johndakelly at yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 8:49 AM
Subject: Nectar
To: Bernhardt Dr Peter <bernhap2 at slu.edu>


As a kid down Rosebud I used to watch the thornbills and red wattle birds
feed on our fuchsia trees out back then the wattle birds pecked holes in
our trumpet Lillie's and robbed them the thornbills watched them and used
the holes they had made to rob them too, but the small thorn bills seemed
to get drunk on the trumpet Lillies, took them a couple of hours to get
their heads right to fly off,
Regards to Linda please
JK.
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