Entry 12
Friday 13th May 2022
7:26am
NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: I have more recently found out that feeding honey is not good for birds, and my mum has since stopped doing so, but some of these older journal entries from 2022 will mention my mum putting out honey for the birds to eat, so please keep in mind that this is no longer something that my mum does.
There is currently a family of Blue-faced Honeyeaters outside the loungeroom window. I haven’t seen or heard them for a little bit, so it’s surprising to see them now, when it’s currently wet and cold. We usually feed them with honey, but we haven’t been doing so more recently because we’ve been more focused on other things. However, the yellow lid (that belongs to a plastic container) that had the honey on it to feed the birds with is currently full of water because of all the rain, and despite there being no honey on the lid and there being plenty of puddles for the birds to drink from, they family decided to drink water specifically from the yellow lid anyway.
I think now is as good time as any to describe what the juvenile Blue-faced Honeyeaters actually look like, as I’ve failed to describe them previously. They have the same featherless patch of colour on their face as the adults do, but the colour on the juveniles is a lot more like olive green than blue. It is very similar to the brownish-green feathers on their back and wings, but the skin is more metallic looking. The olive green colour shifts to a blue colour as they get older. The slight light-blue hue on the base of the adult’s beak is also more of a green colour on the juveniles.