Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 99
Actively
supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds
In
our previous post we were pondering the apparent fraternising between a lone
dabchick and a pair of scaup and speculating without being able to bring any
evidence to the table, that this dabchick was the same one seen off in a fracas
we filmed at the Waikanae estuary in August.
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| Dabchick Mum |
We have
also been monitoring a dabchick pair with two adolescent youngsters down at the
estuary. Here to our great surprise we discovered the male had abandoned the
female and the youngsters. The males are usually great house-husband’s and
sometimes take up a lions share of the parenting. (The females may be better
hunters than their partners) This was a concerning surprise although the mother
seemed to be coping well as a solo mum.
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| Dabchick adolescent looking for Mum |
Only then, we managed to capture
this remarkable footage of a very impatient mother finally losing patience with
a youngster who was resisting setting out on his own. She attacked the
youngster who then, for the first time we witnessed, began diving under the
water to begin feeding himself.
These
three are doing well at the estuary, but when we visited the Ratanui wetland next,
to check up on our dabchick/scaup relationship, we found (uh oh!) that the
dabchick had completely lost interest in her scaup companions, because she had found
herself a mate.
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| New dabchick pair at Ratanui |
Or
had he found her?
We
now had for the first time, a dabchick pair at this wetland. Along with a
tantalising mystery. Was this the
‘bad dad’ who had abandoned his family at the estuary and now taken off after the
female previously ousted from this wetland in August. We are now back in
speculative territory, though the lives of this animals are beginning to look
much more socially complex than is currently allowed for. The one thing we can
be sure of, is that the fraternisation between the dabchick and the scaup did
appear to be filling a social need of the interloper.
There
remains however, a good deal of puzzlement around the male’s behaviour, if
indeed, this is the same bird. The
coincidence however, of his disappearance and then another turning up at
Ratanui shortly after, points to it, as does the fact that, to our knowledge,
there are only these five dabchicks in our local area. But if it is the same
bird then the psychology surrounding his defection remains puzzling. There were
two chicks, quite a handful for the parents, and he didn’t leave the family
until the youngsters were about ready to start feeding themselves. Perhaps he’s
not quite such a bad dad after all.
 |
| Dabchick pair at Ratanui |
But
how did he connect with this female at Ratanui. It is 4 kilometres away and it
is tempting to think that it is a random encounter, but a couple of factors count
against this. Wetland birds move
around a lot during the day, sometimes this is for feeding but it can also be
for resting up and social activity. Evidence we have seen, indicates that they
know where their feeding grounds are and the youngsters learn this from the
parents. It isn’t simply random.
A
second issue lies in the apparent familiarity with which the two behaved to
each other. They appeared to know each other very well.
It
is very obvious when a couple is in a new relationship. There is a lot of
preening reinforcement. The initiator of this preening is usually the more
anxious of the two. This also reveals if one of the birds is a lot keener on
the relationship than the other. They’re a lot closer to us in these behaviours
than we like to imagine.
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| Parera cross pair |
As
an example from the duck fraternity, we witnessed a fracas between a
parera-cross couple who had been in a relationship for two years. A mallard
male began to flirt with the female, which the male mate took great umbrage at
–with the female. He went into a sulk from which the female tried to distract
him. She was unsuccessful as he became ever more passive/aggressive, so finally she just stalked off down the Wharemauku. At this he pulled himself together and
they made up, standing on the bank through a long preening session. Nevertheless
within a week she had dumped him. He could now be seen roosting on his own, in
places they’d often been seen together over the last two years.
Once
again we are guilty of anthropomorphising these animals, but the scientific
convention, of turning them into cyborgs, has made an even worse mess of our
understanding.
Track
we were listening to while posting this – Had to be Tom Jones -Say You'll Stay Until Tomorrow – Sir Tom he is
now, but you can’t get rid of the old photos - Grease is the word -though you'ld forgive a Welsh voice anything..
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