canberrabirds

couple of questions

To: Cog line <>
Subject: couple of questions
From: Ian Fraser <>
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 11:19:28 +1000
I realise that this forum is seen more as a place to report than as a venue for discussion these days, but I'll offer these anyway in case anyone's interested in thinking about them. Both were questions asked yesterday at a course I'm teaching, and I can't satisfactorily answer either.

1. Why are NZ birds generally less brightly coloured than east coast Australian ones?
A couple of possible responses occur to me:
a. It's a false premise - there are too few terrestrial native NZ species to make a valid comparison. b. NZ species tend to be dense forest dwellers, where colour is less relevant in communication than in the open forests and woodlands of eastern Australia. But since I haven't even set foot in our nearest Gondwanan neighbour I'm not even sure if my starting point is correct.
In any case I don't find either response very satisfactory.

2. What is it about WA that 'fades' birds?! eg Yellow-tailed to White-tailed Black-cockies; Eastern Yellow to Western Yellow and White-breasted Robins. It's such a small sample size that I'm forced to concede that it's probably coincidence, but that doesn't satisy me either.

My apologies if this isn't what you want to read here, but I hope that it is of interest to someone out there anyway.

cheers

Ian

--

Ian Fraser, 
Environment Tours; Vertego Environmental Consultancy
PO Box 4148, Weston Creek, ACT 2611
ph: 61 2 6287 4813
---


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