Reader John Harshman sent some last-minute photos that will allow me to slip in a “Readers’ wildlife” feature while I’m on the move (at the moment in the Sofia airport). These are photos from his recent trip to Australia:
First, a four-part sequence of mating Pacific black ducks (Anas superciliosa). If you know mallards, the ritual is almost identical. The pictures were preceded by a lot of mutual head-pumping, in which the head is held horizontally and the neck is moved rapidly down and up. Then (photo 1) the female lowers her neck and half-submerges her body. The male climbs on top, grabs her neck feathers in his bill (photo 2), and things you can’t see in the picture happen underwater. Then the male dismounts (photo 3), whereupon (photo 4) he swims in a circle around her. In mallards, the female takes a bath during this circle, but the black duck didn’t; I don’t know if that’s typical. Also, the male only did a half circle, while mallards are sticklers for a full circle, and I don’t know if that’s typical either.
Next, a great bowerbird (Chlamydera nuchalis) at his bower, and a shot of the decorations, which include all sorts of white things: snail shells, various plastic items, quartz pebbles. He also likes aluminum foil, though there’s none in the picture.
JAC: Note that this is an example of sexual selection producing not a trait of a bird itself, like bright color, elaborate plumage, or fancy courtship behavior in males, but a structure. And that structure (not a nest; it’s used purely to impress females) is what Dawkins calls part of the bird’s “extended phenotype.” (I suppose it does reflect “courtship behavior”.)
I remember once hearing that the more elaborate the bower, the less elaborate the male himself, as if there were no need for gaudy and costly plumage if the male spent so much effort on these elaborate female-attracting structures; but I don’t know if that negative correlation still holds.
And here are a pair of what must rank as one of the most colorful birds in the world.
Finally, just for thrills, a couple of rainbow lorikeets (Trichoglossus haematodus) at a birdbath. I like the reflections.
Lagniappe: California condors (Gymnogyps californianus) iat Big Sur:
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Wow. Really cool. I wonder if the bright colors in both male and female lovebirds (and other related birds like parrots) signifies sexual selection upon both sexes.
On our last visit to the Grand Canyon a California condor swooped down near us, looking us over. It was incredible how big those things are.
I think species identification is an under-appreciated selection force. I guess it’s a kind of sexual selection but I think that lots of animals need to be able to distinguish con-specifics easily from a distance and that this explains a lot of fancy bird colours. These birds live in flocks and being able to find each other seems to me to be more likely to cause the colouration than simply preference for gaudy colours. My idea, which is mine, is that frizzy hair in African humans evolved as a species identifier, to help us tell ourselves apart from all the other apes wandering around the continent in the early days. We were the ones with the big head full of frizzy hair. Later it got longer and longer as hairdressing developed. I wish it hadn’t, hair is a pain.
Damn I saw no condors when I was at big sur! I did see a small cute squirrel that is native to those parts.
Condors are amazing birds…and not particularly shy of humans. They’ll buzz tourists at pullouts on the Old Coast Highway….
b&
Is that the moon in the upper left corner of the condor picture? Nice.
Yes.
What are those little plastic cuplike things mixed in with the white gravel in the bower? They look like the little protective caps that snap on to squeeze bottles.
Anyone have any ideas?
They look to me like the tops of disposable water bottles that have the nozzle thing to drink through.
Bowerbirds are famous for using manufactured objects in their bowers. The satin bowerbird seems to prefer a particular shade of blue, and when I was in Australia the drinking straws you’d get at fast food places were exactly the right color. Bowers near towns were strewn with carefully placed drinking straws.
Seeing their displays is fabulous, too, highly recommended. They mostly don’t seem to mind people. Once some colleagues and I watched a male great bowerbird displaying next to a men’s room in a public park. We got some hard looks as we crouched in the bushes nearby, saying things like, “Wow, look at him go!” or “He is so amazing.”
Alfred Hitchcock would have referred to them as “McGuffins” – it doesn’t matter what they are, but their presence is essential to the plot hanging together, even though their nature does not affect the plot itself. So, for the plot of “boy bower bird meets girl bower bird …”, the bower could be strewn with Maltese Falcons without the essential of the plot changing, while Bogart and Lorre would have looked slightly silly fighting over the Maltese Bottlecap.
I vaguely recall that the bower birds of the 1980s were reported to have a penchant for ring-pulls from tinnies. I’m sure it’s a very plastic behavioural preference.
Yes, as I understand it the move from separate pull-tabs to tabs attached to the can was a big disappointment to great bowerbirds everywhere.
They got over it. Like a religionista on the morning after the much-heralded Second Coming / Rapture / Armageddon / whatever.
Sub
Where were the Great Bowerbirds, JH? When I lived in Mount Isa we’d often get them in the back yard (where we had a mulberry tree like the one in your pics, that was progressively destroyed by giant Mastotermes termites), but the only bowers I saw in town were behind the Girl Guides hall.
I could always tell the GBs were around because I’d hear Whistling Kite calls, but WKs were hardly ever seen in town (only millions of Black Kites, which are almost always silent). Bowerbirds are excellent mimics, and use other birds’ calls in everyday conversation as well as part of the courtship display.