BIRD OF THE WEEK

Black Noddy

The Black Noddy is a common, conspicuous, gregarious dark tern which is found around our globe in tropical waters.

Why Noddy and not tern? Well, it certainly immediately looks different from every other tern, being dark with a white cap rather than the converse. So that explains why the reluctance to call it and its other congeners [Brown or Common and Lesser] terns. The term noddy has a couple of theories. The first refers to the courtship between the male and female which does involve nodding. The second, a term given to the birds by unforgiving and hungry sailors in years past who called them noddies, as synonymous with simpletons, for their naivety that allowed them to be harvested from their nests by hand. The genus name Anous, which means "unmindful" in Greek, further reflect this perception of the birds being both simple and naïve.

The Black Noddy is, in a behaviour that is typically un-tern, a tree nester. Not only does it place a nest in trees it actually makes a substantial nest – again unlike every other marine tern. Keeping the differences going, it regurgitates food to its young, behaviour more typical of gulls than terns.

Our Bird of the Week has a distribution throughout the Great Barrier Reef and onwards throughout the Pacific [being found widely on the Hawaiian islands for example] and then throughout the Atlantic’s Caribbean Sea. Nesting on treed atolls the birds are generally found close to their nesting sites and no migration nor long distance movement.

On Lady Elliot Island in our southern Barrier Reef, where I recently visited, the Black Noddies began breeding recently in 1985. The reason for their initial absence also explains their return. Lady Elliot Island (LEI) was clearly a wonderful seabird breeding island as attested by the huge reserve of guano. From the commencement of guano mining, demanded by the rapid rise in industrial agriculture, in the 1860s until the 1970s, LEI remained almost devoid of all vegetation and had minimal birds nesting on it. Since a re-vegetation program commenced in 1969, bird numbers have dramatically increased. In 2020 the revegetation project continues, in addition to the pesticide weed control, and with them the growing number of trees and, with them, the tree nesting Noddies!

Pisonia tree decorated with Noddy nests

The Pisonia tree (Pisonia grandis), a common species found on coral cays, actually benefits by being crowded with Noddies’ nests. For starters it gains their droppings as fertiliser. Indeed the trees are ornithocoprophiles, plants that require bird droppings to fuel their growth. Second, Pisonia seeds are covered in extremely sticky resin, and birds that brush against them often end up carrying the seeds between islands. Sadly, many birds starve and die cruel deaths when their wings become burdened by an excess of seeds; their bodies ending up too as fertilizer for the nutrient hungry trees.  

Bridled Tern with the beginning of a seed problem...

On the Queensland coast the only other similar / confuser species is the Brown or Common Noddy. It is larger, browner with a less pronounce pale cap. It is, by way of contrast, a ground nester.

Brown Noddy

BIRD OF THE WEEK

Buff-sided Robin

When I first saw the Buff-sided Robin some 40 years ago, whilst visiting Lawn Hill Cattle Station, I was immediately struck by the character of this lovely bird. No long lenses required, just sit, listen and wait and it will come around to inspect you, landing on a branch nearby, to see if you disturb some insect to pounce upon. Like most Robins you can watch them for hours. 

The Buff-sided Robin is found in NE Western Australia, Northern Territory and in Queensland only found within the lower Gulf of Carpentaria region in the North West. 

A solitary breeder in the Spring/Summer from October to March. The nest is built by the female. A clutch of 2 to 3 eggs and one or two broods produced each season. The young are tended by both adults. It feeds mostly on invertebrates, some seeds and inhabits riparian monsoon forests. It can generally be quite easy to see and photograph any time of the year, with a little patience.

A generally common bird in suitable habitat, but appears to be declining as a result of destruction and degradation of riparian vegetation by indiscriminate and poorly managed cattle grazing and feral animals, mostly pigs and cats.

On our North West Queensland tour, the lovely Buff-sided Robin is high on the 'wanted' bird list when we visit Lawn Hill Gorge region.

BIRD OF THE WEEK!

 

AUSTRALIAN BUSTARD

This week’s Bird of the Week is a typical Australian Bustard!

Sadly, against common perception, there is only one true bustard in the country.

There are many other bustards across Asia and especially Africa but down under we just have the one.

And like the many other species surviving across the old world it is a deeply impressive bird; Males stand well over a metre tall!

The birds breed using Leks. That is breeding grounds where males gather for the purpose of display. The females observe and take their pick of all of the males present; thus it is they who have their hands on the steering wheel of evolution….

It is a bird quite closely related to the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard. At the risk of getting way ahead of myself perhaps the Australian Bustard could one day be introduced into India as an ecological substitute for the [perhaps] inevitable day that the Indian Bustard slides into oblivion. *Obviously this would only be done if the threatening processes [Hunting is considered the major causal factor] could be controlled.

[On a similar subject, a similar species, the Great Bustard has been recently re-introduced into the United Kingdom. See http://greatbustard.org/the-project/ ]

Great Bustard has been reintroduced on to the Salisbury Plain, UK

An old name for the specie is Plains Turkey. The turkey part of it is particularly ill-deserved however the Plains part of it is useful as this is a bird of grasslands and savanna over much of the northern and central part of the continent.

This bird can be seen on a variety of our tours; indeed many of the trips that venture either north or west there is a better than average chance of a sighting or several.

BIRD OF THE WEEK

 DUSKY WOODSWALLOW

This week our Bird of the Week is a specie to represent a genus of birds which are primarily Australian in distribution.

The Bird of the Week is the Dusky Woodswallow. And the genus is Artamus and  in it are some eleven species. Six of them are found within Australia. Other members are found in New Guinea, SE Asia, Sulawesi and Fiji. Think of stout little birds that have been created by crossing flycatchers with much sleeker swallows. Like both flycatchers and swallows they feed on insects on the wing.

The Dusky Woodswallow is joined in Australia by the Little, White breasted, Black faced, Masked, White browed.

The Dusky Woodswallow is a predominately brown bird which has a distinct white leading edge on its wing.

It is a migrant that heads vaguely north each autumn and winter; the birds leave Tasmania in April and can be seen as far north as Rockhampton in central Queensland. Certainly each winter on the Sunshine Coast hinterland we can get good numbers of Dusky Woodswallows.

Dusky Woodswallows swarm together to fend off the cold. I captured the image above on a freezing [well very cold] morning in the forests near Jimna, itself on the western parts of the Sunshine coast hinterland. It is an uncommon picture as the birds probably more often than not assemble like this at night.

More commonly on the Sunshine Coast is the White breasted Woodswallow.

To see the other species a Sunshine Coast birder basically needs to head north and west.

Now this is a subject that every birder in Australia has considered from time to time; the naming fiasco that is the Black faced versus Masked in Woodswallows. The short story is the Masked Woodswallow has a large black face [almost exactly like a Black faced Cuckoo shrike]. The Black faced Woodswallow, in an appalling contrast, has a limited area of black on its face, kinda like a mask….. Check out the pictures and decide for yourselves whether a huge error has been made!!

Black faced Woodswallow

Masked Woodswallow

The last two species are better named. The Little Woodswallow is indeed smaller than the rest. It does look superficially like a small Dusky although it does also lack the leading white on the wing.

The White browed Woodswallow is a strongly nomadic bird, ranging over most of the continent, often in the company with Masked. It is difficult to see just one or two of these birds as they are often in very large flocks.     

White-browed Woodswallow

Any of our tours that venture in the wilds of western Queensland offer chances to see most of Australia’s Woodswallow species!