Although Cyclone Debbie did not hit Magnetic Island , strong winds sprang up and sent the Sunbirds nest rocking , rolling and twisting , causing concerns about the safety of the two chicks inside and the very survival of the nest .
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Placid scene , pre blow , one chick visible inside nest.
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Wind still gusting , about 9.30pm , a check of the nest was made before making ready to hit the sack ...Oh no ! Most of the nest was missing . The bulk of it was found on the ground , blown into a corner , the birds still inside . On picking up the nest, intending to perhaps tie it back to the light cord from which it hung, one of the chicks flew off into the dangerous night . A hand was clamped over the entrance to prevent the other from doing the same . However, it wriggled free and flew inside the house, coming to rest next to a wastepaper basket .
Into a shoe box , with a circular hole for air , went the nest and its restless occupant , placed near potplants brought inside the house for protection shoul d the cyclone strike . A search , to no avail , was then made of the garden for the other tiny bird .
Up at 6am , the shoebox was tapped lightly...no response. On opening it was discovered that there was no Sunbird . Thence began a search at floor level with a torch...not in potplants, bookshelves ; not in the box with the elephants; not in the box of seashells behind the lounge ; not in the wastepaper basket ...Puzzling . The bulk of the nest was attached to the cord with string in the hope that it would attract the parents, and maybe the bird which had flown into the dark .
My wife , with sharp hearing , detected the distinctive sound of a Sunbird outside in shrubs . While searching in the area where the tiny bird flew in the night , an adult Sunbird was seen where this blogger was recently bitten on the hand by a spider and ended up with a colourful and swollen hand . Gingerly, shrubs were pushed aside in the hope that the baby bird might be found . No such luck .
Then my wife shouted that she had spotted the bird we had been looking for inside the house . It had been sitting up high next to a Beenleigh Rum Toby jug while we had been searching down low , behind furniture . It could also have been on high snuggled up to a Venetian glass swan with a smashed beak while I crawled about on my hands and knees with the torch looking for it .
When I dashed inside, the bird fluttered down behind a writing desk where it was caught with a cloth, carried to the nest , released - and darted off into the nearby trees , quickly joined by a twittering parent.
Much later, in the Little Darwin den , a distinctive , repetitive sound was heard , which was almost certainly the call of a Sunbird , described in What Bird is That ?, by Neville W. Cayley, as "Tsee.tsee". On investigating, nearby was a Sunbird chick, almost certainly the one which had been on the ship's ration , calling for its parents .
It was able to be caught , did not want to be inserted in the re-erected nest, released and took up a position on the car windscreen wiper, above . From there it flew onto a fence , called , a parent promptly responded and darted in with food . It was last seen flying after its "mother" . Sunbirds are distributed along eastern Queensland from Cape York to Gladstone ; New Guinea , Admiralty Islands , Solomon Islands and the Celebes .
