One of the brilliant things about living in deepest suburbia, in one of the very furthest places you can plausibly describe as “in Sydney”, is that a bushwalk is always around the corner. The direct route to the station might offer glossy black cockatoos hanging upside down above the mechanic’s car park, a mismatched pair of king parrots or a lyrebird, scratching around in the scrub behind the public library.
The library lyrebird
But if you’ve got a bit of time to spare, you can take that trip to the supermarket or the railway station through another world – no cars, no leafblowers and a whole heap of birds. A couple of minutes off the main road and you’re out of the ridgeline’s suburban streets and into the bush on the Hawkesbury sandstone slopes below. Okay, it might take an extra half an hour to fetch that litre of milk but you never know who you might meet on the way.
Monday’s 2k walk back from the station (via the first part of the Lyrebird track that connects to the Great North Walk) featured a surprisingly bold whipbird, a New Holland honeyeater, red-browed finches and a sacred kingfisher on the hunt.
But the highlight of the detour was these guys – a posse of variegated fairy wrens.
Beautiful male variegated fairy-wren in breeding colours with a jenny wren
I wouldn’t have paid much attention to the flash of blue in the undergrowth, if I hadn’t had a heads-up from my birdwatching brother to keep an eye out for these fellas. They’re easily mistaken for the superb fairy-wrens, which are more commonly spotted in parks and gardens. Variegated fairy-wrens, it seems, prefer denser cover and a wider range of trees and shrubs in their hangouts. This patch was burnt off in the last couple of years, so the undergrowth thick but only waist high.
Superb fairy-wren I prepared earlier
Obviously when those obsequieous common names were handed out to Australian fairywrens, the variegated was indisposed. Seems a little unfair since, if anything, the breeding males of this species with their blue, chestnut and purple feathers are, if anything, lovelier, more superb and more exceedingly splendid than their flatteringly named relatives.
Two females and a male variegated fairy-wren
Until recently, I laboured under the impression that a group like this consisted of a harem of females with a dominant male. The interactions I saw on my micro-bushwalk, suggested that this might be less than accurate…
No need for assertiveness training for this jenny wren at least.
Turns out, fairy-wren groups consist of a dominant pair and a handful of younger birds, including non-breeding males. Fairy-wrens, like many other Australian species, are cooperative breeders. While the breeding female builds the nest and incubates eggs, the rest of the group – often last year’s brood – chip in to feed the new chicks. The young males are apparently particularly good value on the snack provision front.
Superb fairy-wrens have been described as “socially monogamous and sexually promiscuous” (a bit like a National Party politicians!). Females sneak off to mate with the local male that wears his high-visibility, high risk blue plumage the longest (it’s not just the birdwatcher that find the iridescent blues and purples more appealing than the brown “eclipse” plumage that the male fairy-wrens sport in the off-season). Sometimes as many as 3/4 of chicks can fathered by a male outside the pair. Recent research suggests that’s less true of the variegated fairy-wren. Counter-intuitively, perhaps, variegated jenny wrens seem to be less likely to “play away” when there are lots of helpers close at hand to help raise the young.
Two males and a female – no idea what’s going on here.
I can’t say how unsufferably smug I am that I get to see these cool little birds on what is, essentially, the school run. They make a compelling argument for active transport. I’ve resolved to turn my back on the car and cram as much gratuitous walking as I can into my days. As you can see, the outcome can be lovely, splendid, superb or perhaps even variegated!
Chestnut shoulders on display – male and two female variegated fairy wrens
Additional references
Diane Colombelli-Negrel (2016) “Female splendid and variegated fairy-wrens display different strategies during territory defence” Animal Behaviour 119 99-110
Allison E. Johnson and Stephen Pruett-Jones (2018) “Reproductive promiscuity in the variegated fairy-wren: an alternative reproductive strategy in the absence of helpers?” Animal Behaviour 139 171-80
Your bonus fairy-wren for reading to the end – a red-backed fairy wren spotted at Oxley Common in Brisbane