couple of questions

[Sue Lashko <>]

Very interesting questions indeed.  Some of my thoughts:

1. NZ vegetation is much greener, forests are darker and the birds blend in very well in both forest and grassland - Kaka, Kea, Kereru, the parakeets, rifleman, gerygone, whitehead, tits and robins, stitchbird, saddleback, bellbird, Kokako, Tui.  The only exception is the Yellowhead.  They don't really need camouflage because, apart from raptors, they had no predators before human occupation.  But your point 'a' may be an answer.  

 

2. WA - the hot summers - they faded me!

 

Sue
 

On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 11:19 AM, Ian Fraser <> wrote:

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
---


*******************************************************************************************************
This is the email announcement and discussion list of the Canberra Ornithologists Group.
Please ensure that emails posted to the list are less than 100 kb in size.
When subscribing or unsubscribing, please insert the word 'Subscribe' or 'Unsubscribe', as applicable, in the email's subject line.
List-Post: <mailto:m("canberrabirds.org.au","canberrabirds");" target="_blank">canberrabirds@canberrabirds.org.au>
List-Help: <mailto:m("canberrabirds.org.au","canberrabirds-help");" target="_blank">canberrabirds-help@canberrabirds.org.au>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:m("canberrabirds.org.au","canberrabirds-unsubscribe");" target="_blank">canberrabirds-au>
List-Subscribe: <mailto:m("canberrabirds.org.au","canberrabirds-subscribe");" target="_blank">canberrabirds->
List archive: <http://bioacoustics.cse.unsw.edu.au/archives/html/canberrabirds>
List manager: David McDonald, email <mailto:m("canberrabirds.org.au","canberrabirds-owner");" target="_blank">canberrabirds-owner@canberrabirds.org.au>