Return of the Blue Faced Honeyeaters

I was so happy to discover the return of the beautiful Blue Faced Honeyeaters the other day. I haven’t seen them for well over 2 years and before then it wasn’t often that you would see them because the pesky Noisy Miners made sure they didn’t hang around.

A few days ago, I was reading a book on the veranda when I noticed the Noisy Miners flying over to the loquat tree by the house and they kept making annoying sounds and smacking their wings as they are wont to do when they don’t like something.

When I went to investigate, I couldn’t see anything at first, then I spied a little blue head bobbing about amongst the large leaves and then I realised the honeyeaters were back!

There were about 8 or so in this one tree, feeding on the flower nectar and twittering away, and they moved so fast it was difficult to get many good photos. Then before I knew it, they all took off because of the Noisy Miners harassing them.

These honeyeaters are quite a striking looking bird with their bright blue featherless faces and lovely olive green backs and a white and black front. The juvenile birds have a yellowy-green colour in their face instead of the blue.

Here are the few good pictures that I managed to get –

And this is a short video of Blue Faced Honeyeaters I had taken back in 2014 when they were last here. The quality isn’t very good as it was taken on an old camera. The tweeting noise you can hear is being made by another honeyeater off camera who is probably keeping lookout. This is an adult with two juveniles feeding on some of my homemade rosella jam.

Glad to have these lovely birds back visiting again. 🙂