Okay, so I have a whole entire bird journal that I write in, dedicated to recording any sightings I've had of native and invasive species of birds, any bird calls I have heard, and also drawings of said birds that live in my area. I usually stick most of my sightings in that book and keep it separate from my blog since it's mostly for me rather than anyone else.
However. I've noticed something kind of interesting in one of the native birds in my local area.
So, the Weebill is one of the birds that I saw today, and at first I didn't really know what kind of bird I was looking at, I simply committed the appearance to memory and then when I got home me and my mum (who knows way more about birds than I do) did some research to figure out the bird's common name as my mum already knew what bird I was talking about, but my mum called it a Weetit rather than a Weebill and couldn't find anything about Weetits (lmao) but we eventually figure it out. I wanted to learn more about Weebills, because when I saw the birdies on my walk they seemed so severely tiny that I couldn't believe that birds could even get that small. They were certainly smaller than the Superb Fairy Wrens, the only other seriously small bird in my local area (probably the second smallest).
Now, the Weebills are the smallest bird in Australia, so it should be no surprise that are are really tiny, but when I decided to look up more information about the Weebills so I could get an exact size in cm, all of the sources I could find stated that the Weebill was about 8-9 cm, from the tip of the beak, to the tip of the tail. The moment that both myself and my mum read that, we thought, there is no way there are 8-9 cm, because the Weebills we've seen are much smaller than that. Like, if I were to guess the size of the Weebills in our area, I would say they are maybe 5-6 cm, maybe 6-7 cm if I was being really generous. But definitely not 8-9 cm.
Now, I know a few cm difference seems like not a big deal, and for larger birds it really isn't, but the smallest bird in Australia? 5-6cm to 8-9cm is a pretty big size difference. And I wonder if perhaps the Weebills in my local area are smaller than expected? I know that the bird I got a very good look at was not a juvenile, as all the Weebills I saw were the same size, so they must have all been adults.
As I wrote in my bird journal, I can see such a tiny little bird's size being overlooked in certain places of Australia, especially my rural town where there is probably not a single bird researcher in my area at all. Like, I don't think most people in my town really even see the tiny little birds very often, and if they do, probably mis-identify it as a Superb Fairy Wren or the invasive Sparrow. But I feel like the Weebills of my area have to be smaller than 8-9 cm, and I wish there were more avid bird watchers in my town that could help me out because there could be a case here for the Weebills in my local area (my town and the towns surrounding it) being perhaps smaller than the officially recorded size.
It's super interesting, either way, and I thought I'd share it. I will be on the lookout for more Weebills! Because I would like to know how small they actually are here.
