--- On Mon, 11/9/09, Ian Fraser <> wrote:
> No, the most likely explanation is that I answered without
> looking up the relevant literature! However my
> understanding of creching is when unrelated adults leave
> chicks together, either to take care of themselves or
> to be cared for by other adults (galahs for instance).
> That's not to say it's the generally accepted
> definition of course, and I'll leave Rob to advise us
> of his understanding.
> martin butterfield wrote:
> Are you sure that they don't 'creche'? I looked
> up HANZAB to see what that had to say about clutch size
> (simple, 2 - 6 mean about 4) and then found a lot about
> 'Cooperative Breeding in HANZAB Vol 2 p 582. . It
> then includes (about 6cm down the second column) the
> words "All birds in pairs or groups, including young of
> earlier broods of season, care for young by helping
> with feeding, leading and brooding chicks...".
> That sounds to me rather like creching - at least the way
> humans do it..
Hi Ian and Martin,
What I saw was two adult birds caring for at least 6 chicks, which fits in the
clutch size. But I'm reasonably certain that I saw one chick leave one of the
adults where it wasn't getting fed to go off to the other to try to get food.
In other words at least that one chick didn't seem to be impressed on the one
adult bird. From what Martin has noted above, it's possible that all 6
belonged to one pair of adults and the chick was just going between Mum and
Dad. So I didn't see enough to determine whether it was one large clutch with
their parents, or two birds looking after chicks from more than one unrelated
clutch.
Rob
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