Update : Unidentified olive backed and aqua blue winged bird

Its a new species of honeyeater that has yet to be recorded.

There was this one day when I was walking about 8 feet passed these birds when they were on the ground and they were feeding with a family group of King Parrots. One of these unidentified birds looked straight at me. I suddenly got very confused because it's face was almost identical to that of the Blue-faced Honeyeater.

This species face had very similiar markings on it to the Blue-faced Honeyeater. Instead of the top of it's head being black it was the bronzey/brown colour you see on Blue-faced Honeyeaters. The bronzey/brown colour went from the beginning of the beak to the eyebrow ridge above the eyes, then down over the nape which then joined up with the back, which was also the same colour. It had a bare patch of skin around it's eyes but it wasn't the same colour as an adult or juvenile Blue-faced Honeyeater. I believe it may have been a dull green colour - meaning it wasn't metallic looking. It's throat was white. The sides of it face was not like the Blue-faced Honeyeater. It had no black colouration on the sides of it's face: it was just white instead. The eyes looked like a Blue-faced Honeyeater but there was something different about them that I still can't figure out.

The head colourations of these two species were unusually similiar to each other. It certainly made me remember this unidentified species face when I took a closer look at it. I now believe this unidentified blue winged bird is a subspecies of, or a new species of honeyeater, and is somehow related to the Blue-faced Honeyeater.

As this species appears to be endemic to Tenterfield, New South Wales, it might be helpful to research the species from this immediate area. I am currently trying to find any kind of bird records that involve bird sightings from Tenterfield that go back 30 or so years. Hopefully someone else may have spotted this species in Tenterfield at some point in the past. I am also thinking of putting a notice on the local Post Office board to see if any local people have photos of this bird at Jubilee Park, Manners Street , between the years of 2001 and 2004. (I haven't done that yet and am not sure if I will either.) That's when I remember seeing them at Jubilee Park all the time.

I ended up by contacting the Australian Museum to get help with identifying this new bird species. The information I provided (written only) of this species was then sent to Dr. Walter Boles and I am currently waiting on a reply back from Dr Walter Boles, the former Collection Manager for Ornithology at The Australian Museum in Sydney.

It is my hope that come September 2013 the bird will return to Tenterfield in order to breed. Only then can I get a video and photos of it. If it doesn't return I can only assume there are small numbers of these birds not far from Tenterfield somewhere breeding in other areas.

A possible new Eastern Spinebill species

I had a welcome visit of an Eastern Spinebill to my Grevilleas today which I captured on video. The above video is not of that sighting/visit. A few minutes later (what I thought was the same bird) the bird returned. But to my amazement as I looked out my bedroom window I saw a tiny version of an Eastern Spinebill, roughly 10cm in length (give or take one centimentre). I could not believe how small this bird was!

At first I thought it was a juvenile but after comparing this video with previous Eastern Spinebill videos I had taken through my bedroom window, I saw this bird has full adult plumage and it's colouring is identical, as far as I can tell so far, to that of a regular Eastern Spinebill. Pausing the video I also saw this bird has a shorter and flatter bottom half of it's bill. It's bill looks straighter than a normal Eastern Spinebill's bill.

I am still excited about this discovery, but I don't want to state that it is an actual new species as the two Eastern Spinebill species have too many similiarities, and I still need to study this bird more to see if there is something uniquely different with it. I also need clearer footage of this particular bird so I can properly identify it.

More notes on unidentified olive backed and aqua blue winged bird

In a previous post I wrote a brief description of this aqua blue winged bird that I am trying to identify. The bird in question has not been sighted since by me.

There are a few other things about this bird that I remember that differentiates them from Blue-faced Honeyeaters. Firstly, Blue-faced Honeyeaters are quite noisy yet the birds I saw in the past and the individual I saw most recently made no noise (that I remember) at all.

Secondly, the ones I saw years ago were hanging around Australian King Parrots, feeding with them. I saw these aqua blue winged birds close up at Jubilee Park. The King Parrots, at the time, were not afraid of humans as lot as they were not startled by them. These other birds were the same, were unafraid of humans too. You could easily get within 7 - 8 feet of these birds, even if you were just walking passed them and they were on the ground. They just seemed fearless of humans. I did not see any blue markings on these birds' faces, which tells me it was not a Blue-faced Honeyeater. It was also a different shape to the Blue-faced Honeyeater, and had a much shorter tail.

Thirdly, they ate seeds. What else they ate I do not know. And I only ever saw them, years ago, at Jubilee Park either in the presence of Australian King Parrots or with a few of their own kind hanging around the play equipment. Back then I did not see them anywhere else in Tenterfield, except for flying into the trees or onto the playgrounds' equipment railings when they finished eating the seeds on the ground.

These birds rarely squabbled with one another, unlike the King Parrots. They seem well organized and very co-operative birds. They never hassled the King Parrots at all but sometimes the King Parrots hassled them if they got in the way of them hassling other King Parrots of their own flock - if they were both on the ground eating the same type of seeds.

Actually, the bottom half of their bodies were pure white (not cream) coloured. In flight, they are basically a white bird with aqua blue coloured wings. Their olive coloured back is noticeable too but only on certain angles to seeing the bird fly off. The olive colouring backs were very noticeable when they were on the ground.

After much thought about the weather conditions of Tenterfield some 11 or so years ago, I have concluded that these aqua blue winged birds prefered wetter rainfall conditions than droughts. In Tenterfield, back in 1996-2001, the annual rainfall was about 600mm per year. This is when the birds were sighted, roughly. Prior to October 1995 I don't know if the birds were in Tenterfield as I was living in South Australia up until that time. When they actually disappeared from Tenterfield altogether I simply cannot remember but it was roughly between 2001 - 2005. 2001 was when the rainfall began to decline in Tenterfield, and each passing year brought less rain than the previous year.

I have been extensively searching the Internet for a visual identification of this bird but I have had no luck so far. However, I have found one image that may be useful, see below:

The bird on the left is a Blue and Yellow Macaw. Its not the bird I saw but it actually has the same aqua blue wing colourings as the birds I saw. This particular blue colour in this photo is the colour I saw on the birds' wings. It is an usual blue colour, and the sort of blue colour you do not forget in a hurry. There are very few Australian birds that actually have this particular blue colouring on their body.

The birds I saw had, if my memory serves me correctly, entirely blue wings just like this Macaw does in this image. And where this Macaw has a yellow belly, breast, and blue throat and chin, with the birds I saw all those areas were pure white.

Now, what is even harder to locate than a blue and white bird is a bird that also has a solid olive coloured back and mantle. Nothing I have found on the Internet thus far has matched the bird I am trying to identify.

However, as I can assume the bird in question is a tropical bird, I may be trying to locate a bird that may not even be native to Australia. If bird colourings has anything to do with which country they originate from I may be looking at a bird that may have come from Central and South America or the dense forests of Asia somewhere.

The birds length was about 26 - 28cms and it had a short tail and to look at them they were about 3/4 the size of a King Parrot.

Thinking back about seeing these birds I always remember seeing these aqua blue winged birds at the playground area in Jubilee Park, on Manners Street. They always seemed to be there for as long as I can remember - and that covers at least 4 years straight. Not once were they not there. They were always there like how trees can't get up and walk away. They did actually make a noise but can't recollect what sound they made now.

The only thing I regret is never having taken a photo of these birds since I've been in Tenterfield as it is the only thing preventing me from identifying this bird species.

Unidentified olive backed and aqua blue winged bird

It was very common to see these birds in Tenterfield but they were one one the species that left because of the drought. A few days ago I saw just one of these birds for the first time in a few years. They used to be commonly sighted at Jubilee Park on Manners Street. Well, that's where I used to see them the most.

These birds are a medium sized bird about the size of a 3/4 grown Satin Bowerbird and is similiar in shape (and stockiness) as well, so too is the length of it's legs. They look somewhat like a Satin Bowerbird in shape. They have an olive green coloured back with almost an aqua blue colour on their wings, I believe. They are a very distinctive looking bird.

It is not the Blue-faced Honeyeater, as the aqua blue colour is much more noticable when the bird is viewed side on or from behind, and/or is in flight. When the bird is not flying, about 1/4 of it's body is the aqua blue colour, and the colour is very distinctive and noticable. It is noticable like how the Crimson Rosella is mostly seen as a red and blue bird in flight.

Going from memory of the bird I saw the other day (and from previous sightings of it in the past) it has a white or light cream coloured underside. It's beak is similiar to that of an Australian Magpie's beak but probably a bit thinner.

I am hoping to get a photo of this bird if I can remember exactly where I saw this bird the other day. For the life of me I just cannot remember where I saw it now.

This bird species is not in the list of all the birds of Tenterfield that I have thus far collected. Nor is it listed in the birdsinbackyards.net website, which I use to identify a lot of the birds sighted in Tenterfield.