birding-aus

Ibis and Raven

To: Birding Aus <>
Subject: Ibis and Raven
From: Bill Stent <>
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2012 10:25:25 +1100
Just received this from John Gamblin ih Hastings, Victoria.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John A. Gamblin <>
Date: Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 10:21 AM
Subject: Can't send to Birding-Aus ??? Please forward on, thank you



Sunday, 28th., October, 2012

From: John A. Gamblin
210, Marine Parade,
Hastings, 3915,
Victoria

Phone:     0432 898 398
Email:     

Dear Reader,

Whilst I was outside today feeding my chickens with their normal food
of seeds and what I get donated to me from the Hastings bakery, I
witnessed an event which truly stunned me in the morning sunshine.

Out of the corner of my left eye I noticed there was an Ibis wandering
around on the back block of land where I live. This on its own is not
an unusual event but what I saw next sure was.

Tagging along with the Ibis was a juvenile Australian Raven.

The Ibis was walking along, stabbing at the ground, and as that
happened the juvenile, Australian Raven, was benefiting by consuming
the food that the Ibis found.

Recent rains had made the ground a bit soft and the catch of worms etc
was enough for the pair of them to get a good feed. After a minute or
two they noticed me and the pair of them flew up and landed on the
nearby roof of STEG Engineering. I went back indoors and got my pair
of binoculars then returned outside, using the binoculars I saw the
Ibis and the juvenile Australian Raven had landed again close to where
I first noticed them and had resumed their food sourcing routine.

I watched them from a location on my rented block where I thought I
could not be seen. As they dined out again I saw the Raven tapping the
beak of the Ibis, and the Ibis then moved sideways a fraction to allow
the raven to extract a worm from the ground under the beak of the
Ibis?

Where I live, I get quite a few species of wild birds call in but this
for me was a first in seeing what I believe to be adoptive parenting?
I would be grateful to read of any other reports of similar sightings
or similar events in other bird species, please. I am
a male of sixty-five plus years of age and have raised a few wild
birds in my life, but I have never seen such behaviour in two species
of totally different wild birds before.

Was this a sighting of an opportunistic young Australian Raven? Or an
overly caring adopted Ibis? I think the latter?

Yours Sincerely,
John A. Gamblin
===============================

To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to: 

http://birding-aus.org
===============================

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
  • Ibis and Raven, Bill Stent <=
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