birding-aus

White Winged Chough behaviour

To: "birding aus" <>
Subject: White Winged Chough behaviour
From: "Philip A. Veerman" <>
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 11:23:00 +1100
At about 3.30 am today ABC TV re-ran one of its nature documentaries about cooperative breeding in Australian birds. It showed this very behaviour (along with nesting behaviour, kidnap of a fledgling chough by another group, etc). It also showed Fairy-wrens, Sugar Gliders etc. I guess most of you have seen it.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Rogers <>
To: <>
Date: Wednesday, 27 February 2002 9:55
Subject: Re: [BIRDING-AUS] White Winged Chough behaviour

Mark Kliene aked a question (see below) about an odd White-winged Chough
behaviour and wondered what they were doing.  They were 'dusting' (also
known as 'dust bathing' and 'sand bathing').  Lots of birds do it but it is
less well known in passerines.  The following is quoted directly from
Campbell and Lack's "Dictionary of Birds".

"... the White-winged Chough dusts in an aberrant manner while standing,
applying billfuls of dust to various parts of its plumage and dealing with
the wings by movements like those used in oiling ..."

It's fun to watch, like most things these birds do.

Ken Rogers



> Hi all,
> Yesterday afternoon i witnessed some peculiar behaviour between two
> groups (3 and 4) of
> Choughs. They were frantically scraping pits in the earth and was
> observed to be flicking
> from what i could ascertain, dirt into the underwings of the primary
> feathers, or could it have been termites or ants? it was almost a
> ritualistic exercise. Is this a common practice, could anyone explain
> this behaviour?
> Cheers,
>
> Mark Kliene.
>


Birding-Aus is on the Web at
www.shc.melb.catholic.edu.au/home/birding/index.html
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message
"unsubscribe birding-aus" (no quotes, no Subject line)
to

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU