Western Bower bird

[desertbirds]

Interesting maps, i think some of those dots may have gone astray. According to the maps i have western,spotted and greater not too far away.I guess the experts say there is a difference betwwen western and spotted but to me its very hard to pick and some of the distribution seems to overlap.Greaters are very obvious as they are mostly grey and much larger than the others.Oh and i havent seen any greaters as far south as the Nt border.

[nathan morley]

I Know my birds very well and I know what I saw an it was a great bower bird and I sed near Bowen not Bowen it's 2 ours away from bowen.

[Nrg800]

Interesting maps, i think some of those dots may have gone astray. According to the maps i have western,spotted and greater not too far away.I guess the experts say there is a difference betwwen western and spotted but to me its very hard to pick and some of the distribution seems to overlap.Greaters are very obvious as they are mostly grey and much larger than the others.Oh and i havent seen any greaters as far south as the Nt border.

Yeah, those maps are from a bundle of different sources, so sing dots way away from the other ones are probably mis-reporting... And when two species are very similar (Spotted and Western), and the source is one that anyone can contribute to (Birdata) there are often mis-identifications, I imagine that all the Spotted records west of the Qld border would actually be Westerns... But meh, they're pretty good maps, from The Atlas of Living Australia http://www.ala.org.au/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And Nathan, if you look at the map for Great, you will see that great is the most common bowerbird in the Whitsundays... so yeah! You most probably did see a Great!

[desertbirds]

I think Western and spotted were once regarded as the same bird,maybe great was recorded on the border of Nt after cyclone tracy. Looking at a field guide i have been confused several times here as to which Bower bird it was visiting my yard.Thanks for the info and maps NRG

[nathan morley]

Yes they are very similar.