Noisy miners and egrets and the like (part 2)

["Ricki Coughlan" <>]

G'day Philip

 

Good to see that your recent trip down south went well.

 

That moment when the sea-eagle snatched the Red Knot out of the flock on the wing presented a vision which I can never forget. The knot was in just about full breeding plumage, so its beauty matched its vanquisher.

 

I followed up on Colin Dricoll's response, but it didn't seem to get through somehow. I think that a number of may like to become better acquainted with Noisy Miners, as I frequently read and hear of so many people who don't like these incredible birds. Anyway, I have included my response again for those who might feel encouraged to get hold of the fascinating paper which it refers too.

 

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G'day again

 

Back in 1975 Douglas Dow, a fairly prolific author on honeyeaters, produced an excellent study on the "Displays of the honeyeater Manorina melanocephala" (the Noisy Miner). (It was published in the German Zeitschrift fur Tierphsychologie, #38, pp. 70-96.) 

 

For several years, Dow studied these birds both in the field and in the aviary, paying particular attention to posture, facial expressions and flight antics which he was able to demonstrate very convincingly all had a particular signal value.

 

What Dow came up with was a very in-depth study of this common species in which he clearly identified a number of facial expressions (enhanced by the bare patches in the region of the eyes), aireal manouvres, posturing and gathering as means for conveying a very broad range of messages (around 60 in his study). Some of these communicated nesting activity, social strata, presence of food, various threats, etc., etc.. This paper revealed that although the behaviour of these interesting birds appears to be "generally cranky", this is not always so. Rather, they have very particular activities and repsonses for a whole range of events, stimuli and social iteraction. Thus the "Noisies" have differing responses to a great variety of species and differing responses to the same species but under different circumstances of time and place.

 

I don't know your area, but it seems likely that the egret rookery/roost is outside of the miner's territory or area of concern. If not, it may be that at certain times certain behaviour by the egrets is tolerated and at others it is not. If it is, then only incursions into their territory may elicit a response.

 

The lesson of Dow's article for me was that it pays to actually "observe" birds, rather than to simply "watch" them, if you get my drift.

 

I only have a well worn photocopy of Dow's excellent work and another copy in a selection of "readings" from my course at Uni. I have never been able to find it online.

 

Ricki

Belrose, Sydney

 

www.rickicoughlan.com/aussiebirds