This is a fairly typical photo of an eastern whipbird. Thanks to its cracking call, you know with absolute certainty that the bugger’s there somewhere, darting from bug to evasive bug. But up until recently all of my pics of them were abstract impressionist in style – an suspicion of a smear in the undergrowth.
Which is a pity, because even aside from their excellent call, these are fine looking birds. I am a fool for anything with a crest, no matter how run of the mill.
But my days of cursing invisible whipbirds are officially over. Because we now have a resident pair in our the garden.
My efforts at growing food in surburbia, or at least food for human consumption, have been largely in vain. Every now and then we get a few bananas or kiwifruit, tamarillos or jerusalem artichokes before the local possums, bowerbirds, cockies, bats and rats figure out they make good eating.
If I have singularly failed to feed us, I have been fairly successful in turning the garden into a tangled mess riddled with trip hazards. In other words, top drawer whipbird habitat.
And now they’re here, there’s a decent chance they’ll stay. Whipbird pairs are territorial, usually nesting each year within a few metres of last year’s spot. And it seems after their chicks are raised, they stick around.
I’ve certainly seen our pair doing their best to defend their territory by seeing off the impudent rivals they spotted in the mirror in the bottom of the garden. Judging from the time they spend singing into it, that mirror has had far more impact on the whipbirds than the horde of male brush turkeys it was intended to discombobulate.
Eastern whipbird having a lovely sing in the bath
Something I didn’t realise until recently is that the distinctive call of the whipbird is an “antiphonal duet”, just like the call of the koels (or “those bloody koels!” as they are known locally). The male of the pair produces the whipcrack, followed seamlessly by a “chew chew!” from its female partner. This kind of singing is usually done by established pairs.
Tactful ornithologists describe whipbirds as “socially monogamous” (a bit like National Party MPs?). Whipbird researcher Amy Rogers comments that, in general, duetting birds like these have “very low divorce rates” compared to non-duetting birds (Rogers 2004 433).
A juvenile bloody koel
Having spent years crouched in the undergrowth surreptitiously observing the sex lives of South Australian whipbirds, Rogers has has concluded that duetting is “acoustic mate guarding” – a way for females to keep close tabs on their other half. In the nests she tracked, twice as many female birds were born as males. Consequently spots with attractively tangled undergrowth were awash with unattached lady whipbirds seeking a mate and territory.
Whipbirds blokes seem to be a good catch, fetching plenty of food for nestlings, even if they don’t help incubate eggs. After the youngsters leave the nest, each parent exclusively feeds just one of the fledglings. You can only imagine young whipbirds end up spending a fortune in therapy.
So once a female has hooked up with a male and they’ve nabbed some decent territory, she keep tabs on him by finishing his sentences, as it were.
I reckon our place, with its undisciplined shrubbery, snake-friendly piles of sticks and vines that loop their way through the trees at perfect garotting height would be damn desirable breeding grounds. I’ve certainly seen the whipbirds gleefully leaping around our carport picking off the window spiders (3/5 for toxicity in the “deadly critters of Australia” book I gave my Scottish spouse to help him settle in when he first arrived).
It may be cockroach infested deathtrap but the whipbirds and the lizards seem to like it here. I’m not complaining either.
You’ve got to admire the ambition
References
Frith, C.B. (1992) “Eastern whipbird psophodes Olivaceus listens to fruits for insect prey” Sunbird 22 (2)
Guppy, Michael, Guppy, Sarah, Marchant, Richard, Priddel, David, Carlile, Nicholas and Fullagar, Peter (2017) “Nest predation of woodland birds in south-east Australia: importance of unexpected predators” Emu- Austral Ornithology Vol 117 Issue 1
Mennill, Daniel and Rogers, Amy (2006) “Whip It Good! Geographic Consistency in Male Songs and Variability in Female Songs of the Duetting Eastern Whipbird Psophodes olivaceus” Journal of Avian Biology, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Jan., 2006), pp. 93-100
Rogers, Amy C. and Mulder, Raoul A. (2004) “Breeding ecology and social behaviour of an antiphonal duetter, the eastern whipbird” Australian Journal of Zoology Vol 52 Issue 4 417-435
Rogers, Amy, Langmore, Naomi and Muldera, Raoul (2007) “Function of pair duets in the eastern whipbird: cooperative defense or sexual conflict?” Behavioural Ecology Volume 18, Issue 1, Pages 182–188
Toon, Alicia, Joseph, Leo and Burbridge, Alan H (2013) “Genetic analysis of the Australian whipbirds and wedgebills illuminates the evolution of their plumage and vocal diversity” Emu – Austral Ornithology Vol 113 Issue 4
More birds to be found in our backyard
A family of collared sparrowhawks – bickering as siblings do
Chilli loving satin bowerbirds, and migratory friends
Female eastern koels, battling over a bloke
Ageing romantic sulphur crested cockatoos
14 thoughts on “Cracking the whip in a messy garden”
Comments are closed.
That’s a fantastic story. I was really surprised to hear a whipbird here in Bacchus Marsh, just west of Melbourne, last year. I never knew they came this far south/west.
I haven’t actually looked carefully at their range, but on reflection, the researcher whose work I read to find out more about the sex lives of my whipbirds did spend time in South Australia, I think. Such great birds, eh?
Lucky birds having such a wonderful area to live. Lucky you having the whipbirds and koels there.
No such luck here (Mt Colah) – the neighbours have cut down the shrubbery, and the mynahs have chased off nearly everything. Except the crows, cockatoos and magpies.
Argh, so frustrating! We are so reliant on good neighbours to produce decent habitat. We are also very lucky that none of the surrounding houses has a roaming cat, although occasionally we see one darting around. It takes a village to create a bird habitat, doesn’t it? But I do feel like the arrival of the whipbird signals the beginnings of success in my campaign over several years to make the garden more friendly to small birds, with plenty of low shrubs and grasses… I hope you get lucky too!
This is a great story about the rich rewards of a ‘messy garden’. And fabulous photos. I’m talking on behalf of the Birds in Backyards Program at Hornsby Library at the end of May and would love to share your blog and, if you are happy to share, a couple of your whipbird photos – especially in the bird bath. It does indeed take ‘a village to create bird habitat.’ Great work!
Sure Judy, happy to share! I’d be delighted to have people introduced to my blog, and I’m really happy to pass on photos of the whipbirds. Do you have an email address I can send them to or would you like to download from here?
I’m not sure if you have looked at my blog more broadly but thanks to our great spot here in Berowra and neighbours with yards as full of trees and shrubs as our own, we have had some wonderful birds in our backyard. Over the summer we had a nesting pair of collared sparrowhawks in our neighbour’s yard, and we had the chance to watch them and their two fledglings learn to fly and hunt from our back deck! If that interests you, there’s quite a few posts about it (and some pretty good pics I think) on the blog between September 2017 and March this year.
Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help. I am very keen to promote bird habitat in suburbia and really try hard to do that through my blog!
Hi Judy! Yes super happy for you to use the blog and its pics in your presentation. If you want larger copies of the photos let me know. I’m not sure if you’ve seen my sparrowhawk posts, but thanks to our location in Berowra and having neighbours that have left tall trees and shrubs on their property, we had a family of collared sparrowhawks nesting next door over the summer, and had the young ones come to our place to learn to fly and hunt. Some nice pics on those posts if you want to give people reasons not to chop down all their big trees as well!!
Thanks very much. Photos seem fine to download from your blog. Sparrowhawk story and photos terrific – but perhaps a bit of a challenge for those trying to attract small birds to their gardens!
Ha! I hadn’t thought of that, Judy! Yep we did have a temporary dip in the number of small birds in our area when the sparrowhawks were nesting – pleasingly fewer miner bird and baby brush turkeys! And we found that when the garden small bird population rebounded, we got some birds we hadn’t seen much before – brown thornbills, Lewin’s honeyeaters and the whipbirds. I think because the red and little wattlebirds weren’t able to drive the newcomers off for a while!
Thank you for this interesting article.
I’m really glad you found it useful!
Very interesting article and great pics. How fortunate you are to have these beautiful birds in your garden. I’m an avid amateur bird photographer with a particular interest in Eastern Whipbirds. We have several pairs in our local area however they are so elusive that photographing them is proving extremely difficult. Sometimes I can be 10′ away from a calling bird but still can’t get a decent image as they’re always in thick scrub and constantly on the move. I’m thinking I may try and tempt them to a designated area with some food. My understanding was that they are insectivorous, however you mentioned they would eat seed from your bird feeder at times. Would that be my best bet (seed), or do you have any other suggestions I could try to get them to a particular area…and stay still for a few seconds?
Hi Tony, I don’t think they eat seed and I am pretty boring and don’t put out food specifically for the birds. My best luck with photos of whipbirds was when they visited my bird bath. I would definitely make sure you have a clear line of sight to that – I have had some luck taking pics from behind the trellis that covers my verandah balustrade. If you sneak around you can sometimes catch them unawares – especially having a wash! Good luck! Nicole