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February 6, 2021

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Backyard birds, brood parasites, feeding fledglings, habitat, Insects, Native birds

Growing up is hard to swallow

Juvenile koel sitting in a pittosporum tree

Juvenile koel in a pitto tree

It’s all about the young koels in our yard at the moment. We have at least two of them hanging around the back yard, begging for food and slowly destroying the mental health of their red wattlebird adoptive parents. Well, I hope for their sake there are more than one set of parents doing the provisioning.

Red wattlebird with spider for its koel young

Red wattlebird ready to take off with its spider

Wattlebird feeding a koel chick

juvenile koel with outstretched wings being fed

koel mantling for a discreet meal

While I’m still hearing koels begging endlessly, I have a suspicion that the parents are trying to back off from supplying food. As a parent of teenagers I can certainly empathise. Wattlebirds normally feed fledgelings for two or three weeks after leaving the nest. The soundscape of our yard started to be dominated by the pleas of the koel youngsters around mid-January, so I think the parents’ patience is starting to wear pretty thin. I’m pretty sure that the koels are trying to push that envelope though.

I watched this rather grown-up looking chick sitting on a branch to beg relentlessly for at least half an hour without attention. It whined and shuffled, whined and groomed.

Koel impatiently grooming

It seemed to despair of getting any attention at one point and started rummaging around for its own tucker. Clearly this flaccid flower didn’t cut the mustard.

Desperation drives an attempt to eat whatever was within reach

Eventually the relentless moaning did result in a couple of snacks.

Koel fledgeling begging

Wattlebird coming in with food

A big mouth…

…being fed

While waiting …. and waiting, and waiting… (I was almost as impatient as the koel for this fledgeling to get a feed…) I spotted a second youngster lurking nearby. It looked a bit skinnier and its plumage a bit patchier and at first I wondered if it was a younger chick, hogging the attention of the exhausted parents. But usually female koels only lays a single egg in a nest – which make sense since the chick heaves competitor eggs and hatchlings out. Sometimes, it seems, koel females will return to lay an egg in a sequence of different nests so perhaps this second youngster was being fed by a different harried parent. I feel kind of relieved on their behalf.

Nestmate? Biological sibling?

One way or another, all that whining seems to be getting less of a response this weather. So our backyard koel chicks are having to forage for their own food. This nugget looks kind of unappealing, though perhaps no worse than the spider that I saw mum or dad retrieving a couple of weeks ago.

Koel chick with mysterious food

Our neighbour’s bangalow palm seems to be a favourite foraging ground.

Koel in the bangalow palm.

Juvenile koel eating bangalow palm berries

Koel in bangalow palm

Perhaps the temptations of the palms are a bit too great. Last week, I watched a youngster beg from a branch near our back verandah for a while. No parental attention was forthcoming, and I thought it had given up, as it went surprisingly silent for quite some time, hunching and looking pensive. Then this happened:

Juvenile koel waiting for…

this cameo appearance

from a bangalow palm fruit

and its subsequent disappearance

I think this mysterious fruit must have been stashed in the bird’s crop, . Certainly this same koel was stacking away the berries at an extraordinary rate on its visit to the bangalow palm, so the idea that it was tucking it away for a later snack seems pretty plausible. Having read a bit about the way birds use crops – a muscular pouch in the oesophagus that stores food – I am now tremendously jealous. What a terrific idea! Why the hell don’t humans have one? I suppose blokes can use beards, although that’s a visually disturbing alternative.

Koels – noisy, whiny parasites – get a bit of a bad rap around here, but I can’t help admire them – their chutzpah, their gorgeous feathers, and their admirable capacity to never, it seems, go hungry.

Juvenile koel perched on a bangalow palm with blue sky in the background

Koel posing

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mccnmatt

Posted on

December 31, 2020

Posted under

Backyard birds, breeding, cicadas, competition, Insects, mating, nesting, predation, raptors, territoriality

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Crested hawks for Christmas

Every birdwatcher has a list of sightings they dream about (if that sighting is accompanied by a National Geographic front-cover-worthy picture all the better). For the cognoscenti – sophisticated, proper twitchers – this list seems to feature rare, endangered or hard to spot critters, that may or may not be kind of boring to look at. But for the crass newbie like myself, bling is important. Flashy, that’s how I like my bucket list birds.

For a long time, a decent look at the gloriously multi-coloured (but annoyingly canopy dwelling) spotted pardelote was top of the list. A camping trip to the fabulous Wolgan Valley a couple of years back ticked that box. Worth sweating my way up a hill to look down on the magic of the diamond-bird.

Spotted pardelote

Obviously rainbow bee eaters were on also on the list, until my parents moved to Bingara in on the northern slopes of NSW, a town where grey nomads and bird nerds duke it out for dominance in the local economy.

Pair of rainbow bee eaters

Since then, my top two have both been raptors. There’s the black shouldered kite with its glorious red eye and hauntingly regular presence along highways. I see it often on long road trips, hanging out near boggy pasture land, but getting a photograph seems to require a willingness to pull the hand brake on at high speed in the middle of a major road. I’m not saying I won’t do that, but I’m still working myself up to it. And then there’s the absurdly excellent Pacific Baza.

Stunning golden eye – tick. Dramatic black-and-white belly stripes – tick. Elegant flight, even acrobatic during the mating season – tick again.

And, absurdly, a crest – its nickname is the “crested hawk”. Does it get any better than that? I think not.

I was hugely excited when I spotted what I thought was a baza in our neck of the woods a few weeks ago – zipping past and disappearing into the leafy top of a liquidambar tree. Birds seem to be attracted by a pheromone released by amateur photographers who are not carrying a camera. Certainly that was the case on this occasion. Lacking any visual evidence of the encounter, I figured it was a wish fulfilment sighting. Probably one of the collared sparrowhawks, also stripy chested canopy dwellers. They’ve been back on the scene at our place over the last month or two, hanging out in the top of the neighbour’s pine tree, bragging about their kills and having brief and frustratingly hard to photograph sexual encounters first thing in the morning.

Collared sparrowhawk hiding in the foliage of a liquidambar

But this week – a late Christmas present. My outstanding neighbours Laura and Steve texted to say that the mysterious bird they had previously seen lurking in a melaleuca tree had made at a guest appearance by another neighbour’s pool, and been IDed. It was a Pacific baza.

It’s a miracle that I didn’t get hit crossing the road as I raced over to their place.

Adult Pacific baza

The trip to casualty that could have ensued would have kept my from not just a single baza but a little family – a pair (I think) and a large and whiny fledged chick. Naturally, they were lurking in the very top of the tree, and of course, my skill-set with my flash new camera meant that my career as a natural history photographer is not going to take any great leaps forward.

Adult Pacific baza avoiding eye contact with a juvenile

Blurry as it is, I interpret the body language of the parent here as indicating an unwillingness to provide further snacks. We saw both adults make a few short flights, and at least once definitely offer the youngster some prey. The juvenile whined without interruption, inching along the branch towards the adults, ducking its head and restively half-opening its wings. This parent avoided eye contact and eventually flapped off to a separate spot in the tree. A couple of weeks after they leave the nest, apparently, juvenile bazas stop getting food provided by their parents, so I guess this was what was playing out here. Baby Baza was certainly less than happy.

Juvenile baza (I think) in a huff

To say I was ecstatic to see the family of bazas within 100 metres of my front door would be to underestimate my degree of excitement. But then a troubling thought struck me… would the presence of the bazas harsh the buzz of the sparrowhawk pair that I’d seen canoodling on my side of the street? The pair appeared soon after a fierce storm that tore some big branches in our backyard and might well have trashed a nest somewhere down the road. Would the appearance of the bazas spoil the chance of a late-breaking bit of nest building?

Juvenile baza showing crest and aggro

Like Pacific bazas, sparrowhawks spend a lot of time in the treetops. They’re ambush hunters, lurking in amongst the leaves ready to burst out and pluck small birds from the sky.

Looking for prey

Sparrowhawk hunting from a pine tree

Sparrowhawk ignoring dregs of its last meal

They’ll take sparrows (perhaps unsurprisingly), mynahs and miners, mudlarks and wattlebirds, even birds as big as crested pigeons or crimson rosellas. Here’s a pic I took recently of a sparrowhawk trying to choke down the remnants of a leg of a bird. See the toes poking out of its beak? I watched it pacing up and down on the branch, wiping its beak repeatedly and generally looking a bit agitated. I note that the left over leg remained untouched and I can kind of understand why.

When something gets stuck on the way down

Maybe its not surprising after this kind of experience that a sparrowhawk might want to ring the changes, diet wise. And in fact, sparrowhawks won’t say no to a bug or two. A Canberra study found half of sparrowhawks’ prey, by the numbers, were snails, spiders or insects, with Christmas beetles and cicadas a particular feature. All those insects weren’t too filling – they made up only 2% of the biomass. But still, that interest in insects could them into competition with bazas, which eat fruit, frogs, lizards and snakes, grabbed from the foliage at the tops of trees, but especially like stick insects.

Yet another thing to inspire delight in bazas – an eccentric specialist diet. When I was looking at this critter in the Berowra train station, I wasn’t thinking “if only I ripped that to bits it would make a toothsome snack for my children”. But if I was a baza, I would have been.

Stick insect

However, larger insects are a favourite of Pacific bazas, while sparrowhawks seem to go for nothing bigger than a huntsman or a cicada.

Disappointingly, the bazas have disappeared from the paperbark in Steve and Laura’s drive, for all its proximity to a refreshing backyard pool and ample opportunities for hunting in the tops of tall trees, undisturbed by competition for their favourite phasmids. They’ll probably be nearby – these raptors aren’t migratory and Berowra sounds pretty close to their ideal habitat:

tropical and sub-tropical forests and woodlands, largely within 300km of the coast. In the breeding season they frequent tree-lined watercourses, rainforest, sclerophyll forest and tall woodland, but range widely following nesting to lower ground, when they may visit urban parks and gardens.

One birdwatcher in Queensland followed the reproductive fortunes of a pair of bazas as they nested in a series of different trees within a couple of hundred metres of his house on his property for a decade. So, no National Geographic cover photo as yet but I remain hopeful. 2020 really was a dud year but with the crested hawk in town, who knows what fine things could be in store for us in our backyard next year.

No, don’t look back to 2020 sparrowhawk! Forward, always forward.

Raptor encounters in our neighbourhood

Sex, nests and dogfighting – sparrowhawks set up house in our local pinetrees

Sparrowhawk sibling rivalry – baby serial killers learn to hunt

An eagle in suburbia – a wedgetail on Berowra Creek

The very big fish – sea eagle vs mulloway

References

Briggs, Allan (2018) “Breeding biology and behaviour of a pair of Pacific Bazas ‘Aviceda subcristata’ in central-coastal Queensland over 10 years”. Australian Field Ornithology, Vol. 35, 2018: doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.20938/afo35095101.
James, P. (2004). The breeding cycle of a pair of Pacific Bazas Aviceda subcristata in south-eastern Queensland. Australian Field Ornithology 21, 133–140
Olsen, Jerry, Judge, David, Trost, Susan and Stephen Debus (2018) “Diets of breeding Brown Goshawks Accipiter fasciatus and Collared Sparrowhawks A. cirrocephalus near Canberra, Australia and comparisons with other regions and raptors” Corella, 42

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mccnmatt

Posted on

March 4, 2019

Posted under

Backyard birds, Native birds, Satin bowerbirds, Uncategorized

The one-eyed butcherbird

Butcherbird in tree good eye gleaming 2

We had an unusual visitor this weekend – a cocky grey butcherbird, turning up first in the branches of the Japanese maple that reaches up to our back deck, and then hopping boldly onto the balustrade.

Our butcherbird showing off his hooked beak

Butcherbirds are just the kind of generalists – like fellow “corvoids”, magpies and currawongs – that do really well in urban areas. But we’re rarely had them turn up at our place before.

And this lovely lad (or lass – they look too similar for an amateur like me to distinguish) was notable in another way, too – it had only one fully functioning eye.

Looking side on you could see a glimmer of a right eyeball, but it was sunk back into the feathers of the head – on a front view only his inquiring left eye was visible.

Butcherbird on ground looking at me frontallycrop

Our one-eyed butcherbird

The wounded eye seemed to have healed long ago – this guy was distinctly perky and healthy looking, if a little edgy. And this was an adult bird – no sign of the brown and buff colours of a juvenile (like this one spotted at Narrabeen Lake a few years ago). So whether it had been injured as a chick or as an adult, it seems to have been getting along okay for quite some time.

Juvenile grey butcherbird

In the past, animal rescue organisations assumed that birds with serious injuries to an eye wouldn’t make it if they were released from captivity. Usually birds found wounded in this way were euthanised. But in Germany and the US, researchers and birdwatchers have reported hunting birds like owls and eagles surviving for years in the wild – and even successfully breeding and raising chicks – with only one functional eye.

On a first glance, it seems obvious that binocular vision would be important for judging distances when flying. An early twentieth century ornithologist proposed that “a bird is a wing guided by an eye” but it seems there’s a lot more to eyesight in birds than navigating through the air.

Researchers think that binocular vision is more about being able to see what you’re doing with your beak than getting around on the wing. Birds that have to do tricky things with their bills – cormorants making sure the fins of the fish they’ve just caught are in the right position to slide nicely down their throats, for instance – need to see what they’re doing. Having your eyes at the front of your head means you’re less likely to spot a predator from behind, but it’s worth it for the tucker.

The injured eye

Keeping track of surroundings with one eye can produce neck injuries

A cocked head allows a good view of prey

It was interesting to watch our visitor managing life with a limited visual field. He could certainly fly, and RB saw him successfully catch something that was scuttling around on the deck. That said, when we (naughtily) fed him a few pieces of meat, he seemed to struggle a little to get a handle on it.

He was also pretty twitchy, reacting to every sound, looking regularly over his shoulder so he could keep tabs on his surroundings with his good left eye. Butcherbirds usually dive down on prey from above, and as he looked out for tasty treats below, he kept his head cocked to maximise his vision. As a someone with only one “good” ear, I recognise the advantages of that head tilt!

Our one-eyed bird keeping an tabs on surroundings with his one good eye

Our visitor also seemed to understand the possibilities of humans as a resource. At one point he flew right up to where I was sitting by the balustrade, looked me in the face and “spoke” to me in a mildly demanding way familiar to me from my teenaged childen. Later on, I went inside, leaving the sliding door was open, just a bit. The butcherbird hopped up to the door, and after a few moments of hesitation, continued straight through into the house.

Butcherbirds are smart and excellent problem solvers. They’re also creative, as my colleague, the violinist and composer Hollis Taylor found, when she started analysing their marvellous improvisational music making. Was our butcherbird visitor just curious, and yearning to see our interior decor? No matter how clever these guys are, that seems unlikely.

Butcherbird on chair looking at me blind eye visible crop tighter.jpg

I suspect that this guy was looking for friends. Perhaps some local folks who regularly fed him – maybe in a room with a sliding door, just off a deck? Did his human buddies take care of him after his eye was injured? I don’t know but I can say for sure he expected good things from us, and our kind.

Grey butcherbird expecting good things from humans

References

Brown, Matthews (2016) Clever crows: Investigating behaviour and learning in wild
Torresian crows (Corvus orru) and related Cracticids in a suburban environment, Doctoral thesis, Griffith University.

Hegemann, A, Hegemann, ED, Krone, O. (2007) “Successful rehabilitation and release with subsequently brood of a one-eyed Eagle Owl (Bubo bubo)” Berliner und Münchener tierärztliche Wochenschrift 120(5-6):1

Martin, Graham (2017) “What drives bird vision? Bill control and predator detection overshadow flight” Frontiers in Neuroscience 11

Tyrrell,Luke and Fernandez-Jericic, Esteban (2017) “Avian binocular vision: It’s not just about what birds can see, its also about what they can’t” PLOS One, Mar 29.

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mccnmatt

Posted on

January 28, 2019

Posted under

Backyard birds, mating, Native birds, Satin bowerbirds, Uncategorized, Waste

The bowerbird bachelors

You know life has been intense when an incident from the backyard in spring doesn’t make it to the blog until the tailend of summer. Our backyard re-enactment of “The Bachelor” had to be at least four months ago because satin bowerbirds only do their courtship routines from April for September. The bowerbird dating show was a while ago now, but it was a truly memorable occasion.

A couple of times in the past we’ve found some blue items – pegs, bottle tops – in the bottom of the garden, collected together and rearranged over a period of days in a mysterious and seemly significant way. But this time the assemblage was visible from our back verandah. We had ringside seats for the show.

Though he was decked our in the iridescent black of a mature male – something that only happens when satin bowerbirds are at least seven years old – our bachelor seemed to be new at this. There was no signs of a bower per se, just his collection of pretty objects in an unsalubrious corner of the garden. I spent a day on the deck “working from home”, watching him shuffling them around. The milkbottle/yellow leaf combination seemed to be a particular favourite.

Satin bowerbird with milk bottle trophy

A dangerous blue toy

A favourite combo – yellow leaf and milkbottle

After quite a bit of this faffing around, he had a visit from a female.

Female satin bowerbird comes to look around

Cue bending, twisting, flapping of wings, along with some impressive eye bulging.

Courtship behaviour of the satin bowerbird – bowing

Flapping…

…and eye bulging

Well, impressive to me but possibly not to the visiting female. I know it’s anthropomorphic but this face screams “get me out of here!”

“I’m a satin bowerbird… get me out of here!”

And indeed, within minutes, a second male arrived on the scene, having surveyed the situation from afar. He had a look around, somewhat dismissively it appeared, and then abruptly flew off with the female in tow. I almost heard him muttering out of the corner of his beak “C’mon babe”.

Second male looking on from the distance

Second male not very impressed by our bachelor’s display

Our bachelor, thwarted, seemed to decide that inadequacies in his collection of blue objects was the key problem. My kids had helpfully (if problematically from a plastic waste point of view) scattered some colourful gee-gaws around the back patio. Our guy seemed concerned that one of the “house” wattlebirds might have an eye on the azure ornaments that were key to his sexual success. It was on.

Showdown between bowerbird and wattlebird

“Mess with my blue things and I mess with your foot!”

One distinctly irked bowerbird

Having put the little wattlebird firmly back in its box, our lovelorn male returned with additional trinkets to pimp his bower. But to no avail.

More courtship display

Unimpressed female bowerbird

There were other visitors that afternoon, but despite sustained and prurient interest, I saw no signs of sexual congress and the next day there was no repeat performance although the blue objects remained in their inauspicious arrangement by the woodpile.

However, a couple of weeks later the abandoned pile of treasures received another inspection from a “green” – presumably a young male who hadn’t yet earned the glossy violet-black feathers of a grown-up.

Juvenile male pimping the bower

“And these sticks should go… there!”

He seemed to be practising his courtship display, favouring golden twigs rather than the milk-bottle/leaf combo. He had that eye-bulge down pat already though. I wonder if we will see him back – perhaps in the mottled black-and-green plumage – for the next season of the Bowerbird Bachelors.

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mccnmatt

Posted on

December 17, 2018

Posted under

Backyard birds, breeding, hawks, nesting, predation, Predators, raptors, Uncategorized

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Motherhood on a windy day

Kid with mum distant 2 wide crop

Last year two collared sparrowhawk fledglings made it out of the nest high in our neighbour’s pine tree. This year it was just one. It’s been a lot quieter around here. No squabbling over snacks. No shuffling along branches side by side or pratfalls high in the canopy. No hightailing it after a sibling chasing a feed.

There’s been more adult and parent bonding, though. I rarely saw the adults and offspring together last year. But a few weeks ago, in windy weather, I got to see them hanging out low in the trees by our drive, sheltering from the tossing branches.

The juvenile looked, by turns, absurdly sleek and adult, and fluffy and completely gormless. Mum (or dad) seemed to be wrestling with the same conceptual problem – how grown up is this chick really?

Typically when the sparrowhawks catch a juicy white-faced honey eater or wattlebird chick, they call out, over and over again. I’m not sure if this the dinner bell for partner or offspring, or just triumphant territory claiming. They swiftly pluck the small bird they’ve caught and then gorily and fairly rapidly consume it.

But on this particular day, the adult hawk sat very still, prey gripped tightly, not taking even a bite. The youngster lurked awkwardly nearby, apparently not sure what to do next.

Kid with mum lower

Eventually mum (or dad), probably irked by the local amateur photographer, flew to a higher perch in the trees. But her prey, plucked, pink and gleaming, was still untouched.

Mum with prey 2

She was waiting. Eventually Junior flew up to join her.

Mum and kid with prey 2 story eye glint amended

He still seemed clueless about what she wanted him to do – as indeed I was. I’m willing to have a guess, though.

Adult sparrowhawks start by feeding their young little shreds of meat – the avian equivalent of pulled pork, I guess. I have heard the adults teach the fledglings to catch little birds mid air by dropping little snippets of prepared flesh to them on the wing. This youngster was definitely not in possession of that skillset.

Mum and kid with prey high 3

But I think dad (or mum) was trying to give the not-so-little little one a low-stakes chance to prep the dish for her (or him)self. But it certainly wasn’t happening on this occasion. Young blood had a good look, then stumbled past and took off, not even having a tiny go at flesh-tearing.

Juvenile from behind looking over shoulder crop

To be honest, I’m really pretty worried about this young one. I’ve been working from home a lot lately, and every morning, I hear sparrowhawk calls, and I race up the drive with my camera.

But it’s just the adult I see, calling and calling and calling.

Further references

Barnes, C.P. and Debus, S. (2014) “Observations of the post-fledgling period of the collared sparrowhawk (Accipeter cirrocephalus)” from The Sunbird (2014) 44(1): 12–23

More sparrowhawk stories from our backyard

The end of the brush turkey plague? The battle of the baby birds….

There’s a collared sparrowhawk nesting in our garden…. or is it a goshawk…?

Our sparrowhawk summer

The teenagers start hunting for themselves… Sibling rivalry amongst the young serial killers….

Sex, nests and dogfighting

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mccnmatt

Posted on

September 14, 2018

Posted under

Backyard birds, Fruit, fruit trees, Gardening, Insect pests, Insects, Native birds, Plants that attract wildlife, Subtropical gardening, Uncategorized, Weeds

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Blue eyes and biteys

The glamorous eye of the brown cuckoo-dove

We’ve had a visit from some old friends this week: a gorgeous pair of brown cuckoo-doves. who each took a constitutional around our patio before reconvening for an exhaustive mutual preening session above the chicken run. They’re rainforest birds, but don’t mind wandering away from damp gullies in search of tucker – fruit, mostly, along with seeds and the occasional flower blossom. You’ll often find them in disturbed areas and roadsides, feeding off weeds like lantana and wild tobacco, so what with the great swathes being carved, legally and illegally, through East Coast bushland, they’re doing better than many other forest loving critters these days.

And they are expanding their range as well. Back in the day, Sydney was the southernmost point you’d reliably find a cuckoo-dove. No longer. Just a continuation, I guess, of the species’ earlier journeys from the north, where several close relatives still live. In fact, the amboyna cuckoo-dove of Indonesia and the Sultan’s cuckoo-dove of Sulawesi were considered part of the same species only a couple of years ago when I last wrote about these portly visitors.

Cuckoo dove looking back from water crop

Brown cuckoo-dove quenching its thirst in our bird bath

I’m not sure what attracted them to our place, now we’ve executed the humungous broad leafed privet that used to lure them here. The fruit-bearing natives we’ve planted to replace this nasty weed – lillypillies, blueberry ash, koda, bolwarra, native gardenia, small leafed tamarind, brush muttonwood – are all too teeny to offer snacks of any significance. I spotted the cuckoo-doves innocently drinking from the bird bath but I suspect they may also be implicated in the overnight disappearance of the fruit from our mulberry tree. Though since I chose to plant the mulberry right next to our washing line, maybe that’s a good thing.

Cuckoo dove long tail amend

For me, cuckoo doves are all about those beautiful blue eyes, though their exceedingly long tails are also a feature, helping them with fruit nibbling acrobatics, and at one time earning them the name pheasant-tailed pigeon. But as far as science is concerned, they’re mainly interesting for their body lice.

A female brown cuckoo-dove being groomed by its mate

Normally, it seems, parasites co-evolve with their hosts. A family of lice tend to be found only on one family of birds (and in fact, each species of lice normally exclusively hang out with one species of bird). But the Ischnocera – the family of louse that this pair are trying to remove from each other, in a rather romantic manner – can be found on all manner of birds – not just pigeons and doves, but also pheasants, quails, partridges and indeed megapodes. Though not apparently our local megapode, the brush turkeys, or “the bloody bloody brush turkeys” as they are usually referred to in our household.

But if cuckoo-doves brought their own personal payload of body lice with them when they moved south to Australia, they also do a fine job of cleaning up some other pesky insects – fruit flies. Along with ripe fruits, cuckoo-doves gobble up loads and loads of larvae. One researcher went so far as to say that vertebrates like brown cuckoo doves are the “natural enemies of fruit flies” (Drew, 1987, 287), words to bring joy into the heart of a sub-tropical gardener. But further reading crushes these dreams. Yes, cuckoo-doves, (along with rats) made a huge dent in the fruit fly population. But unfortunately, they did so in the course of eating most of the available fruit.

I guess, then, its lucky I’m hooked on the looks of our frugivorous visitors, and I’m not banking on them for pest control.

The blue eyes of the brown cuckoo-dove

Additional references

Drew, A. J. I. (1987) “Reduction in Fruit Fly (Tephritidae : Dacinae) Populations in their Endemic Rainforest Habitat by Frugivorous Vertebrates” Australian Journal of Zoology 35 283-8

Gibbs, David (2001) Pigeons and Doves: a guide to the pigeons and doves of the world, Bloomsbury Books

Gosper, Carl and Gosper, Dennis (2008) “Foods of Pigeons and Doves in Fragmented Landscapes of Subtropical Eastern Australia” Australian Field Ornithology, 25, 76–86

Johnson, Kevin, Weckstein, Jason, Meyer, Mathys (2011) “There and back again: switching between host orders by avian body lice (Ischnocera: Goniodidae)” Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2011, 102, 614–625

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mccnmatt

Posted on

November 12, 2017

Posted under

Biodiversity, breeding, Brush turkeys, Death, egg laying, mating, Native birds, nesting, predation, raptors

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Battle of the baby birds

Male sparrowhawk taking off with prey. Photo by Josh Matthews.

There’s a festival of death going on in our neighbourhood at the moment.

Several times a day, amongst the robotic clicks of the bower birds and the squawks of the wattlebirds, there’s an insistent high pitched chittering call, often accompanied by the din of freaked out noisy miners. I’m not 100% sure of its ethological or evolutionary significance, but as far as I’m concerned it’s a signal for me to drop everything and dart up our drive with my camera. One of the resident pair of collared sparrowhawks – probably the male – has caught some small clueless bird and is perched in our neighbour’s radiata pine steadily eviscerating it.

Female sparrowhawk getting stuck in

“Beak? Yuk” – see above the hawk’s head

Dead wattlebird being sized up

He rips off the feathers and flings away less tasty bits (check out the beak mid-air above) all the while, often with his mouth full, calling out “Dinner’s up!” to his mate.

Sparrowhawk calling for his mate

Mid-meal call

For the last few weeks she’s been spending much of her time in a the nest at the very top of another decrepit pine tree in the yard of next house along the way. Sometimes he flies up to the nest with tasty chunks of flayed bird flesh in his claws, but I’ve also seen her fly in to the designated “disembowling” perch to join him a few times. Occasionally, she seems to sneak away to do a little light hunting herself. Risky, though, leaving the nest unattended.

Currawong after the sparrowhawk nest

Collared sparrowhaw about to fly

There’s the pied currawong I saw hopping surreptitiously through the branches, warily inching towards the nest, until it was chased off by the indignant parents as it was virtually peeping over the side. And the pair of cacophonous channel billed cuckoos I caught flapping around the neighbour’s garden a few weeks ago – apparently they sometimes parasitise collared sparrowhawk nests.

Pair of channel billed cuckoos

But I will be deeply unimpressed if the chicks that come out of that nest are bloody channel billed cuckoos, for all my secret admiration of those giant hornbill beaks and strapping crucifix silhouettes.

Because the sparrowhawks seem to have rid our garden of the plague of baby brush turkeys.

Baby brushturkey in the backyard

A whipbird seems to have taken up residence this spring. Needless to say, I don’t have a photograph despite being nearly eye to eye with the noisy bugger once or twice. So, tiptoeing round my backyard trying to catch a clear shot, I heard a scrabbling in the leaf litter. “Ah, a baby brushturkey” I thought sagely.

And then it struck me… I haven’t seen a single baby turkey in our backyard this year. Not one! Last year, they were sleeping on top of the predator proof cage or standing outside in the daytime, gazing longingly at our flock of little baby chooks. The year before one wandered into our pocketsized laundry and spent eight hours pacing the two foot long windowsill, failing to notice and thus escape through through the wide open door. But this year… nada.

Baby brush turkey hanging out with baby Winter the Leghorn

Baby brush turkey being liberated from the laundry

Collared sparrowhawks (unlike their lookalikes brown goshawks – so similar that it’s altogether possible they could be our resident raptors) catch most of their prey in flight, bursting out of their lurking places in the foliage to grab little birds on the wing. But the baby brush turkeys that previously haunted our place do fly, right from the day they dig themselves out of their hatching place in their father’s mound of decomposing leaf litter, and start their life of unnaturally early independence.

So maybe the sparrowhawks have been catching them on those very first short flights from mound to chicken yard.

Baby brushturkey on an early flight

Dad and mound

Eight hours into the vigil on the windowsill

Much mourney Treasure the Sussex and an entourage of brush turkeys

Just a few of the even dozen visiting in the last few years

I don’t hate brush turkeys, but I do hate a having dozen brush turkeys hanging out in my backyard, sexually assaulting my chickens, nicking their food and, given half the chance, eating their eggs. So the idea of generations of sparrowhawks breeding happily in the neighbour’s trees and keeping the local population to manageable levels is extremely appealing.

I’m starting to wonder if there’s a connection between the familiar sound of chainsaws and the plague populations of brush turkeys in Brisbane and the northern suburbs of Sydney over the last few years. No dingoes, fewer foxes foxes thanks to baiting, and nowhere much for the local raptors to nest in suburbia these days, the tallest trees victims of fears about bushfires and death-dealing or at least car-damaging falling branches.

But today my endless blurry photos of the neighbourhood raptor nest brought good news: what seems to be a creamy ball of fluff snuggling up to its mum in the distant collection of sticks that is the sparrowhawk’s nest. Bring on the next generation of brush turkey assassins!

Posted by

mccnmatt

Posted on

May 2, 2015

Posted under

Backyard birds, Climate change, Garden trees, Gardening, Plants that attract wildlife

Comments

5 Comments

Timber!

Black cockatoo on the top of the tree cropped further

We’ve had a mob of at least fifteen yellow tailed black cockatoos hanging around in the last few days, mewing like strangled cats and being chased around by magpies and (I think) even noisy minors. We get the yellow tails quite often around these parts, especially in the winter-time, thanks to the large and sickly but apparently tasty radiata pines that loom over our place.

A male yellow tailed black cockatoo enjoying a pine cone in the neighbours’ yard

Yellow tailed cockatoo tucking in

Silhouette of a yellow tailed black cockatoo

The rule in Hornsby Shire is you can cut down a tree that’s within three metres of the foundations of your house. If only there was some special by-law where the council chops down the tree for you for free if you can’t slip a paperback book between a towering pine and your bathroom. One of these days I’ll be communing with nature and the nearest treebole will swell just that tiny bit further and burst straight through into the shower cubicle. That fresh piney smell with not a cent spent on disinfectant.

Two of the less prepossessing pines in our yard

This tree is cold and wants to be inside

It’s been very very very windy in Sydney lately, and quite a few people have been unfortunate enough to experience that piney odour, quickly followed by plenty of refreshing indoor rain. We’ve been pretty lucky, but we’ve spent a lot of time staring anxiously out the window at various ominously swaying monumental specimens. When I lived in Brisbane I used to be a bit judgey about the lawn to tree ratio in most peoples’ yards. But if cyclones start creeping their way down the coast I may have to reconsider.

Female yellow tailed cockatoos and a male peeping out of

Yellow tailed black cockatoo enjoying a dead tree at our place

Black cockatoo angel

Yellow tailed black cockatoos are doing pretty well on the east coast, including urban areas, no doubt thanks to their penchant for pines. But apparently they often struggle to find nesting sites, preferring hollows in trees a century or more old. They seem to like our senescent radiatas, and spend time perched high on the various dead branches voguing. I hope, when we finally save enough shekels to pull down the extensive array of dangerous trees in our yard, we still see them.