Dear Birders
I watched Striated Grasswrens (3 occasions) performing these distraction
displays, 2 within a metre of my feet, in Gluepot Reserve S.Australia
when doing Mallee Transect Surveys in March/April 2002 - in both cases
they had chick hiding in spinifex. But when there last November, I was
trying to photograph a male grasswren who was hiding in a 2 metre tall
shrub. He kept moving to the far side of the shrub as I walked round it,
so I gave up and started walking back to the car, whereupon I heard
squeaking from a low clump of spinifex at my feet, out of which crawled
a very small almost tailless chick, which sat on the top. The male
promptly flew out of his shrub and landed on the ground the other side
of the spinifex, calling urgently to the chick, which vanished back
into the spinifex. He didn't perform any distraction movements aimed at
me, only telling the chick to get out of sight immediately, and flew
straight back into his safe shrub. I wasn't able to sex the 2002 birds
I would suggest that the wren's behaviour is a 'distraction display'.
It is unlikely to be imitating a mouse but is behaving in an unusual
manner to distract a predator from its young just as a Red-capped
Plover feins a wing injury or a Pied Oystercatcher lays on the sand
flapping its wings. Your squeak may resemble an alarm call and this
would initiate the behaviour. I have had fairy-wrens behave in this
manner when one or more of the group is being removed from a mist net
for banding.
Greg Clancy
G'day Birders,
I was watching a wonderful display by a male
variegated wren in my front garden yesterday, as I 'squeaked it did
the 'mouse' as fairy-wrens often do. This is where the bird scurries
around on the ground or on low vegetation with the tail on the ground
and looks like a mouse, jennies do it best, I've never seen a blue and
red mouse which is what this variegated was trying to look like. Which
brought me to the question, why? Why do they do this? I mean it looks
great from a human perspective but how can it help the birds? And it
is the jennies that do it more often, though yesterdays display was
lead by the male, who seems to scold and chase off the jennies when
they started to join in on the act.
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