a season of birds

At this time of year I have a number of bird species migrating, or making flighty swift visits to my garden. I have not succeeded in photographing them in my garden, but visitors have included the once-common elegant, unmistakable bulbul, thought by some to be a pest but far more common fifty and sixty years ago, when I was young.

Absolutely not a pest, the Wonga Pigeon is audible wonga-wonga-ing and comes for a quick look and seed hunt before wisely scooting back to the bush, having in earlier times, because it's fat and walks around, been hunted and eaten near to extinction. Here is a little sound bite of its voice that I made in 2007 at my former farm. There it grew tiresome, same voice all day. Here, sudden, brief, unexpected, it's a huge pleasure.

There have been rain events of one to two inches of rain, a week apart, with heat between. Growth luxuriant and at my house with many ponds, at least three species of frog at noght. At Helen's house, the bird life and lizard life abound. A 30cm lizard has come into the house and it's not easy to see how to get it out.

A juvenile magpie has decided to be Helen's kitchen window friend. You can tell it's a juvenile both because it is fearless and has not learned any hostile responses to humans and also because the black and white feathering is not sharply defined yet. Alas I did not get the camera in time to record three young magpies on my neighbour's lawn one afternoon, either in play or in reality engaging in vigorous puffing, pouting, pecking and flapping competition. But here is Helen's friend, a regular visitor to the window. He does not seem to be using the window as a mirror but curious about life on the inside and happy to be talked to... and to gurgle back.

Meanwhile out the front, in the damp morning, corellas gather on the powerlines. Since recent inland droughty years, they seem much more common on the coast. 

and fly away... (click on any photo to enlarge)

When there is a storm coming out of those hills to the west out there, these birds come screaming ahead of the storm in large numbers, shouting "who's got the map, where's the map, which way to New Zealand??!!" 

But in this quiet cool damp morning, it's different, quiet, social.

I realise that hanging out on the power lines in the morning has simple explanations. They are very social, there's quite a bit of healthy allopreening going on. But also, if you've been in safety in trees in the night, you are wet and you need somewhere in the open to dry. We don't hang our washing under trees, same reason. 

little films, little events

Helen's north side, southern hemisphere sunny side, has removed a tree, a cypress to which they seemed very attached while reluctant hitherto to understand how very big it had become, would become. Removing it has given much more light to Helen's front garden, which offers new opportunities for gardener and plants.

The cypress had had the top cut off some years ago in hope that its growth would thus be limited. in fact it meant multiple trunks developed.

This first movie shows some skill on the part of the arborist in dropping the last trunk.

and this is something entirely different. One living space in my house has a very large window to the south, facing a metal fence and the wall of the next house. a very narrow garden bed, beside a concrete path, no sun in winter, blistering dry and hot in summer. When I arrived in 2008 I planted two Kennedia rubicunda, Dusky Coral Pea, which has over-run the whole space, turned the view green and created summer cooling. And in this springtime, red flowers with nectar for red wattlebirds

intellectual strengths of birds; observation powers of people

The Guardian has carried a wonderful report on the capacity of cockatoos to solve complex puzzles. Screen shot inserted here to entice you.

from http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/grrlscientist/2013/jul/10/lock-picking-cockatoos

I offered the following comment:

If you consider the intricacy plus force involved in extracting pine nuts you get the idea of everyday cockatoo life. Some Australian cockatoos seem very keen on lemon seeds, trashing the fruit. A particular generation of fancy tall street lights in Canberra were swiftly unlatched either for fun or for the rubber seal.

I think we underestimate or often just fail to see the extraordinary daily tasks of wild birds to eat. After a week of heavy winter rain in my southeast Australian garden recently the smallest birds are not seen, many perhaps not survived as seemed the case after fierce summer heat this year. The Eastern Spinebills frantically flitting for surely dilute nectar in scant quantities from downward facing flowers on flopping branches of Chinese lantern bushes, Abutela? Not a multistep puzzle but requiring flight, balance, twist and persistence generally invisible to and beyond gym-oriented Homo urbis. The satin bowerbirds came after the rain eased, out of the forest to grab whatever looked tasty in the garden.

Ordinary bird life is hard, complex and necessarily involves innovative braininess just to be alive. Big birds like cockatoos have the advantage of size and surface to volume ratios that mean they are less vulnerable to environmental stresses. Which means they have time on their hands to do research and innovate; the connection between time on hands and outcomes of an interesting kind deserves research!

Don't forget in review of larger bird cleverness the kites in northern Australia, alongside indigenous people when they use fire to hunt and produce preferred food bearing landscape. Some kites (bigger corvids) pick up burning sticks and carry fire to new fronts to drive out prey for them. Intelligence, observation, memory, participation, bravery, imagination, craftiness... I think a lot of human judgement about so called dumb animals arises from our own failure to note what is around us all the time.

.... But after reading your report, I'm not walking down my cockatoo infested streets looking like that dude in shades, and definitely not while carrying my Rubik's cube!

I choose not to place google ads on my blogs and web pages. But like most, The Guardian derives revenue from such. I note that in this cockatoo intelligence story, the google ads were these below, on the day when I looked and living where I live. You will get different.

I wonder if it's cockatoos or people that are being trained to do 'monkey tasks' (dear monkeys I apologise for the term, which is meaningful, I know, only within a prejudiced, narrow Homo 'sapiens' kind of vernacular, otherwise I'd have to say something longer, like "trained to do artificial and life-sapping researcher phony tasks like domesticated cockies get to do in the post-industrial age of subdivided and subdivided focus for doctoral students").

And where I wrote in that comment that: "...the connection between time on hands and outcomes of an interesting kind deserves research..." I don't think time on hands includes time at computer. Must run... rain stopped outside activity for a week or so here, as did pleurisy.

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But time on hands, for cockatoos? ....  I suddenly realise and run back to add this.

I suppose domesticated cockatoos, which the researchers assert to be smarter than wild cockatoos, have more time in their hands, and are waited on, fed, cleaned-up after. Life of some human children.

Whereas the big cockatoos and their close relatives in the wild,  in the morning after a cold and wet night, do not have to run hunt food like little birds, are not trapped at their research desks or perches with humans sharing their wisdom***, but fly free to find a powerline to sit on or swing around on in the sun, to natter, kiss and fiddle with each other.

Now who's smart in that comparison?
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*** I knew one 'domesticated' cockatoo, intellect enriched by human company, who used to respond to the doorbell by shouting "bugger off, there's no one home!" ...  Indeed.