Common name: Spotted pardalote
Scientific name: Pardalotus punctatus
For such a tiny bird — 10cm long and weighing just 6g — Australia’s spotted pardalote sure has a lot of names. Early settlers in New South Wales called it the diamond bird because of the white-on-black spots of its colourful plumage. Nineteenth-century English ornithologist John Gould went along with that, dubbing it the spotted diamond-bird.
Other names include bank diamond and diamond dyke, from its habit of nesting in burrows on riverbanks where often only the crimson flash of its tailfeathers is visible.
The Indigenous people of southern Western Australia called it widopwidop, no doubt imitating its distinctive call. The fact that pairs of pardalotes whistle at each other throughout the day makes them hard to locate, as call and response seem to arrive almost…
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Good Organic Gardening (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue #13.1 - 2022