We have a group of SD's nesting and so i decided to check theiur nest, when I found to my surpirse several black things only about 1cm long with brownish orange fur. Anyone know what this is? Is it food or is it an invasion of bugs or what? Any help appreciated.
Also, not sure if they're bugs or not, they just looked like them with black featureless things with fur, not sure if they're grubs or something else...
Don't worry about it, I found the nest on the ground this morning, must have been blown out :(
Gidday Amateur I recently had a pair nesting in our fernery and I found the same thing.
Mate I chose not to stick around to long when I saw them as they have all the trademarks of a blood sucking parasite.
Hi Amateur,
They could possibly be Acacia (i.e. Wattle) seeds.
Wattle seeds will often be very hard and plain black with an orange "furry" tail on them and range from 2-3mm to maybe 10mm.
Just looking on the BiBY website and it suggests that SD's eat seeds and grains, so fits with diet.
.
Cheers
Tim
Cheers
Tim
Brisbane
Gidday Timmo, Happy New Year mate. What you say is very interesting and is right however the Acacia seeds in the nest at my place could fly and crawl.
I noticed them when I stuck my hed up to look in the nest they all launched at my face.
Cheers
Tassie.
LOL
OK, point noted... Thanks, Tassie :)
Cheers
Tim
Brisbane
Lol, nice one tassie. Though mine don't fly, and i fthey did fly into my face I probably would of fell back down the tree. Instead they were being decimated by ants when the nest was blown out. So were they being kept for food by the doves or are they intruders?
Mate I still think they are parasitic,next time I will try and catch one to identify it.
Well I'm not sure if our Turtle Dove Baby made it, they have survived their nest falling out of a tree which means they had to build a new one, cats investigating it, pied currawongs seeking their young as food, and then this morning a dead turtle juvenile turtle dove, which had flown into our window :(. I'm hoping it wasn't from 'our nest' but it most likely is, I cannot see the young one in the nest any more, I will check again but I fear the worst :(