Mary O'Byrne, Plucking bees ... (ANIMAL & NATURE 2023)

Plucking bees … White-faced honey eaters have beautifully adapted curved beaks and long hairy white tongues to remove nectar from each of the individual florets that make up a Banksia flower. Systematic in their approach … each floret is probed in turn in an elliptical circle. The birds are intensely territorial and won’t allow any other bird other than family to sup, though crafty smaller birds using foliage as camouflage can sometimes manage a quick drink before being chased. Then, I discovered a flightless angry honey bee frantically twirling in a never-ending circle on the ground under my banksia tree minus a wing and thought a White-faced honeyeater might be the culprit. If a bee is smart and delves in away from the honeyeaters, then it’s usually ‘safe’, but not from this bird … it plucks them from the air as well as the florets.

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