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The mistletoe bird is a small Australian bird in the flowerpecker family. It eats mistletoe berries which pass through quickly (supposedly in 4-25 minutes) with the seed intact due to the anatomy of the bird. It is excreted with the sticky surrounds of the seed and, if lucky, will stick to the branch of the tree the bird is sitting allowing it to parasitically grow. The bird probably wipes its bum on the branch to dislodge the sticky seed helping the sticking process.
The birds are small and move around a lot, the foliage of the casuarina trees is quite dense and does a good job of deceiving the auto-focus, but at least the birds seem intent on finding and eating berries so they didn't mind me standing around trying to take pictures.
Here are some pictures -
1) Some red mistletoe flowers with a brown honeyeater on a casuarina tree
2) a male mistletoe bird
3) a Juvenile - lacks the red chest and has a yellow beak
4) a male eating a mistletoe berry
5) Exuding the sticky seed mass
The birds are small and move around a lot, the foliage of the casuarina trees is quite dense and does a good job of deceiving the auto-focus, but at least the birds seem intent on finding and eating berries so they didn't mind me standing around trying to take pictures.
Here are some pictures -
1) Some red mistletoe flowers with a brown honeyeater on a casuarina tree
2) a male mistletoe bird
3) a Juvenile - lacks the red chest and has a yellow beak
4) a male eating a mistletoe berry
5) Exuding the sticky seed mass
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