Today I woke to the sound of a butcherbird duet, a sign of life on an otherwise cold and still winter’s morning. Thinking they would make a good photography subject, I decided to see if I could follow my ears to track them down.
Emerging onto the street outside my apartment block, I realised the singing was echoing off the tall buildings around me and that try as I might, I couldn’t quite pinpoint the direction it was coming from. In my room, I had felt like the sounds were coming from the direction of the main road, so I headed that way.
The song was that of the pied butcherbird (Cracticus nigrogularis) specifically, a beautiful, full-bodied fluting sound, rich in melody and sung by the male and female together. At the main road, however, there were already cars passing by, and it made it hard to hear the still somewhat distant birds.
After wandering a few blocks fruitlessly, I ended up walking away from the main road, towards houses and parkland. There, at the top of a Norfolk pine, I saw a pied butcherbird singing out into the suburb, its partner now nowhere to be seen. When a Torresian crow joined the butcherbird near the top of the tree, the smaller bird left its perch, and the show—of which I’d only seen a few seconds—was over.
Later that afternoon, I went back to the park hoping that I would see the same bird lower down in the trees, hunting ground-dwelling invertebrates during the warmest part of the day. Instead, I saw it again perched at the top of a tree, this time a eucalypt, and preening instead of singing. As I moved around the tree base to get the best photography view, I saw a messy clump of sticks about eight metres above my head in the next tree over. It was a butcherbird nest!
Sure enough, the partner of the preening bird suddenly appeared with a twig in its mouth and proceeded to forcefully insert it into the nest. I watched it make several of these trips, with the bird disappearing each time into the backyards adjacent to the park, and returning with more twigs.
I was struck by how the nest-building was the endeavour of one bird solely, with its partner remaining high on its perch the entire time, showing no interest. I suspected it was the female undertaking the nest labour, and the male who was perched up above, perhaps where he could keep a casual eye on their breeding territory. Later, the Birds in Backyards website confirmed these thoughts, noting that females build the nest and incubate the eggs all by themselves.
It was also interesting to read that pied butcherbirds breed at different times of the year depending on whether they are in the northern or southern half of the continent. With these local birds having just started their breeding season now in August, it would appear that according to butcherbirds, Brisbane is a southern location that has more in common with Sydney and Melbourne than the tropical north. The chill in the air today has me agreeing with them!
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