--- On Sun, 4/12/09, Gunnar Engblom <> wrote:
So, why not make an excersize? What birds would you chose in your
country as tourism attractions? A good subject for discussion
anyway. Note that it could also be certain types of congegations of
birds
Hi Gunnar,
Of the Australian birds I'm familiar with, my top tourist attractions would be:
1. The Lyrebird (actually two species, the Albert and Superb). A large bird
with a spectacular display behaviour by the male, and an amazing mimic. The
most bizarre call I've personally heard a Lyrebird making was the sound of a
car alarm. Attenborough recorded a description of it;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y
2. The Satin Bowerbird. Another species with a fascinating mating display
dance, but also a skilled builder. The adult male constructs a king of open
clamshell shaped avenue bower from sticks, which he surrounds with anything
bright blue which he can get his beak on and carry. In the wild away from
humans, this may just be the flowers of native tobacco, but near people there's
usually blue plastic straws, aerosol lids, bottle caps and so on. Scientific
American published an article which described the only known animal behaviour
of stealing non-food items. They distributed numbered pieces of blue glass
amongst bowers in an area then recorded which pieces where were over a period.
The birds stole from each other, all trying to get the best collection. They
were also observed destroying each other's bowers.
As for other birds, I think Australia has a reputation as "the land of parrots"
and it's hard to pick one or two as the best. For pretty plumage you'd need to
consider birds like the Pittas and the Gouldian Finch. For others with unusual
behaviours there's the mound builders that incubate their eggs in mounds of
compost. There's the laughing Kookaburra with its famous call, but there's
much prettier kingfishers like the Azure Kingfisher. Even some of the
rainforest pigeons are spectacularly beautiful but seldom seen.
I got a top two but how to pick a top ten?
Rob
==============================www.birding-aus.org
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