Hey all,
I've been asked to forward my offline response to Matthew to the whole list
(by another party).. so here goes.
One way of telling the young apart is looking at their host parent. Most
cuckoos parasitise one family almost exclusively, and the bronze-cuckoos are
no exception. In their case, the host families are primarily fairy-wrens
and thornbills for horsfield's and shining respectively. Of course, this
may have exceptions, but logic of strategic nest parasitism for maximising
hatching success means that birds mostly parasitise their specialised hosts
with little exception.
There isn't a great deal of literature which discusses or shows this, a few
have come out of BoZo, but the main work on this has been presented in
Brooker, M. & Brooker L. (1989) Cuckoo Hosts in Australia,
Australian Zoological Reviews, No. 2.
A number of subsequent publications have been made by Booker et al, and some
work has been done in BoZo on various aspects of parasitism by cuckoos.
Booker & Booker (1989) recorded Chrysococcyx basalis (horsfield's)
parasitising 97 host species Australia-wide and Malurus spp (fairy-wrens)
were 'undoubtedly the major host'.
C. lucidus (shining) was found to parasitise 82 species and Acanthiza
(thornbill) species 'are the major hosts in all regions'.
Cheers,
Damien
----Original Message Follows----
From:
To:
Subject: Identifying dependant young bronze-cuckoos
[SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2007 14:12:17 +1000
With both the Shining Bronze-Cuckoo and Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoo having a
status of breeding migrant in the ACT, I was a little surprised to see
from recent ABRs that there have been few breeding records for either of
these species. Philip Veerman was kind enough to point out to me last
night that there may have been sightings, but due to the difficulty in
determining which species the young might be, an observation record
couldn't be submitted. There may be other reasons as well.
So that I'm prepared for seeing a dependant young bronze-cuckoo being fed,
I would be grateful for any information on what diagnostic features exist
to make the distinction.
This information could be valuable to others, either as something new or
to refresh their memory.
Over to you...
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