Some birds – individuals & species – prefer to be alone, when drinking or bathing.
Others are happy to “share the facilities”…or they have to share them; flocking birds may be within a group of many – even many thousands – of individuals.
On some afternoons in February 2025 (near Youngs Siding, between Albany & Denmark) the “line up” at the birdbath reminded me of “the six o’clock swill” – an unlovely feature of most Australasian pub “culture” for surprisingly much of the 20th century.
Perchance you are someone who has never visited Western Australia, chances are excellent that both of the pictured honeyeater species will “look familiar.”
However, if you have never set foot in southwest WA, your eyes have certainly never seen one of them, “in the flesh, uncaged”.
Which one?
All will be revealed in another chapter in this series.
Footnote
Most Australians who are alive in 2025 were born too late (or arrived too late) to have experienced/endured/witnessed the “six o’clock swill”
Lucky them!
(I was raised near to a border. For the first 13 years of my life, “thirsty” Victorians would drive into SA in order to enjoy an extra thirty minutes of boozing. 6 pm in western Victoria was 5.30 pm in SA’s southeast)
“The hour of drunken anarchy” is vividly depicted/explained here.
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