Black-eared Miner

Congratulations - good reward for the hard work finding them

Congrats Rick, and great tick pics to boot.

Congratulations on finding Black-eared Miners!  By the way,the shots are terrific!

it's interesting how it hasn't shared the success of its relative, the Noisy Miner. 

Reflex, one of the great features of South Australia is the amount of mallee habitat. Most people in this state (& other states, I suspect) view mallee as waste land & ripe for clearing to grow wheat. In fact, it possesses an incredibly rich biodiversity, particularly of bird life. (Please, please you eastern staters, don't all rush here at once. The mallee is fragile.). Most of my great birding experiences have been in the mallee & Rick N is doing a great job in featuring SA mallee birdlife.

As to the very limited numbers of Black-eared Miners I found this interesting: http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/nature/recoveryPlanFinalBlackearedMiner.pdf

There seems to be a number of factors involved in the species' restricted distribtion & numbers:

• it's an opportunistic breeder & breeds best after rainfall with mild to warm seasons. This confluence of conditions is much less frequent in mallee areas than in many areas inhabited by, say, Noisy Miners
• lots of hybridisation with yellow-throated miners has occurred thereby reducing the potential numbers of pure Black-eared Miners
• the species performs best in old growth habitat which hasn't been burned for at least 50 years. With the increasing penchant of authorities to burn, burn, burn there's likely to be increased pressure on Black-eared Miner populations
• most Black-eared Miners are in very large ares of contiguous mallee. With increasing fragmentation of habitat due to clearance for agriculture & clearance by fire those contiguous areas are becoming smaller & therefore less suitable for the birds
• grazing reduces understorey & therefore habitat quality

I'm not sure that this explains why the species inhabits such a restricted area but I guess the same question could be asked of most of Australia's bird species. After all, restriction is a relative term. Evolution plays a part there somewhere, I imagine, but just what the precise factors & influences are may best be left to an enterprising PhD student or similar person with an extensive research budget.