blue things, spittle sticks, learning and despair

And then something happened.

Of course, it happened when the movement sensing camera was inside, having come in, nothing recorded, nothing to say, card on the table but nothing on it,  empty-handed for dinner and refused to leave the couch. So in this Sunday morning, you have partly our eyes' reports, via brain and fingers, partly a handheld camera from inside and wobbling, but providing a movie with information.

It is deep winter, ha ha. 30 July, southern hemisphere It is deep drought and from inland, god knows how they are doing out there, big gusty wind again today. This morning, token of winter, temperature around 6c overnight. By 9am, 22c. Which definitely is harbinger of spring. Until maybe a winter next week.

Source: The Guardian

The scene in the bower space today a little like the Trump White House, with its shifting personae. We should note in relation to this vile creature on the right, Anthony Scaramucci, that his Italian name is that known generally in English as Scaramouche, who is thus described by Wikipedia:

"a stock clown character of the Italian commedia dell'arte (comic theatrical arts). The role combined characteristics of the zanni (servant) and the Capitano (masked henchman). Usually attired in black Spanish dress and burlesquing a don, he was often beaten by Harlequin for his boasting and cowardice."

Well, that's the other news today. They have a knave, three generals and a clown. "This is the way the world ends..." comes into my head. I don't know if it's bang or whimper yet, but there is a lofting spreading sea of sob and scream and hurt.

The Hollow Men of T.S Eliot, here read by Jeremy Irons, bringing us "this is the way the world ends." T.S. Eliot lived far before our madding crowded world. But this still fits.

The bowerbirds around us are not really fairly to be compared with such monsters, I apologise for bringing them into conversation but everybody does these days...

Our birds live in, are part of, and add to the ensemble of ecology.

Our bowerbirds are noble adventurers, not like that lot, they bring to mind Shakespeare's Julius Caesar Act IV, Scene 3, here briefly with the incomparable Sir John Gielgud.

"There is a tide in the affairs of [bowerbirds] which taken at the flood leads on to fortune...."

 I draw your attention to the fact that bowerbirds had a hand in the coloration of that movie clip.

There is indeed a tide in the affairs of bowerbirds. 

So: what happened.

We learned stuff, a eureka plus shared experience.

Sunday morning, prime window watching time. Helen saw it first. There are few blue items left, but black bowerbird[s] are stealing spittle sticks!!

Spittlesticks? We know that bowerbirds spittle up the sticks with which they build their bowers. We also understand that this gives female birds a chance to savour spittle (a subject perhaps deserving study in Homo sapiens****) as a measure of male worthiness. But also, the spittle, in the eyes of bowerbirds, who see a very different wave length of light compared to our own, is luminous or irridescent. And here we dumb humans have been looking at the dance arena, with everything flattened, seeing that blue things have been stolen. And forgetting that to the bowerbirds this 'empty space' is illumined.

**** since writing this, in catching up with popular culture and discovering the most popular youtube song of all [albeit brief] time I discover that Despacito contains lines translated as: "Come test my mouth to see what it taste like to you/I want to see how much love do you have..."

But today, spittle sticks being taken away. Who takes them where, will they deceive some lass?

Also today present is a young, not-yet-black male who may be one we have seen practicing dance and song at the bower. But now there is no bower and in the movie we join him, watch him, trying to work out how you begin to build a bower... how can you begin to build a bower?? Also in the film you see he has arrived with the greatest blue treasure imaginable, none such ever before in this place. We have seen so often the dance with the blue bottle top accented by the white leaf. And here comes the young bird with the top from someone's drink bottle, deep blue with a white thing fixed to the top. What a prize. A prize for whom? Who reigns supreme, as they say in the Iron Chef Japanese. Which is really relevant in showing how the Whole World is Watching when you compete for top bowerbird.

 That's just to help bring you down to same level of bowerbird, in contest, admiration, decoration, excitement and winner takes all. Not the original Whole World's Watching, which has more to do with current politics among humans than bowerbirds, though that time now seems so ... decent.

Note from the film that the green bird seems attracted to the port wine magnolia, left of the stage. We find that there are a lot of blue things on the ground under that tree. We will place a camera inside and see what happens.

Note that the black thief leaves consistently stage left back, direction south, heading for the Grotto bushland 100 metres away.

no visible action at home, went out to clear minds

Every day there are bowerbirds (and many other birds) around the house, but no one has walked in front of the camera.

We did something entirely different today. 45 minutes from home to this magical place, alone

We are two months into very severe drought, but here, from under the scarp, wonderful clear water flows. And from here in the Kangaroo River to where the Kangaroo from the north meets the Shoalhaven coming from the south behind Tallowa Dam. Downstream water drawn for Nowra, from behind the dam water taken up near Fitzroy Falls to go on to the Sydney water supply.

But listen to the sound of freshest fresh water.

Alas

afternoon light, no bower, 16 July 2017

The sadness of today, the big sense of loss, is that there is no bower any more.

Our last film record is a week old, but in the last several days, rushing to other things, we could hear the bower crowd chortling behind the scrub.

Not now.

There remains a space, there remains a camera... but blue treasures have almost all been stolen away.

It's been three months Perhaps the birds, like some trees, got their season clocks disturbed by the gentle warm days, nights only just turned cold. But I think there's more to it than that. The weight of time allocated to human research and observation is in springtime. We have observed birds away from the hormonal demands of spring and having fun as well as learning their roles.

As a final (for now) movie I have selected a three minute clip which features a next-generation almost-mature bird (or two), shaping their grown up lives, with a cameo appearance by Odimbar at the end. Not good to read too much into it but, having watched Odimbar for a quarter of a year, Odimbar looks a bit down, as indeed his blue treasure collection looks diminished. Did he, like the ill-trained racehorse, make his run too soon, or has he gone to the paddock for a spell?

an interloper

After the 'morning patrol' reported in the previous movie, early morning saw a lot of activity. I was planning to present you another long and tedious movie of ho hum remarkable bowerbird behaviour around the bower...

... and then just before 8am something different happened... an interloper, a black beast of Australian forests.

Dawn Patrol

Bowerbirds are not unusual among birds in working long days. The night is especially hard for very small birds, whose surface to weight ratio is high and who need food quickly in the morning. Bowerbirds a bit more endurance.

This is just a 46 second movie, 6am infrared black and white by camera, to show the completion of a morning check of the bower, with sounds of other birds, especially currawongs... and then Mr O flies vertically up to his treetop lookout.

Green bird's learning curve

In our last movie, a male and a female bowerbird were frustrated in their desire to practice courtship by green male bowerbirds challenging the mature black male bowerbird. Clearly antagonistic, clearly challenging the dark male. Could a green male overwhelm the black male at this point in the year and re-fledge by spring as a bower-king?

This adds to the intriguing question of how green males grow up, how they transform around age 7 into black mature males. I don't know if they all do change. I don't know what comes first, the behaviour or the physiological changes to a new character and a new role and a new colour.

In this movie, on the afternoon of 17 June, a different situation. On 11 May in this blog, Green Bird Afternoon showed a green male spending more than 20 minutes concentrating on being a grown-up, tending the bower, trying out tunes and dance steps. Today a movie almost 47 minutes long, actually covering more than an hour in which a green male had uncontested command of the bower. Odimbar, the black male, comes back briefly early in the movie, but there is no serious squabble and he leaves the bower after a short time, to return near the end of the film. It's as if he's happy to have had someone mind the bower while he went for a long lunch.
...

So we bring you Green Bird's Learning Curve ...  if this is the bird of 11 May, it's further up the curve. Or it may be a different bird with a different style and voice. But unlike the 11 May bird, it's not claiming 'squatters' rights'.

One of the things the green bird has done today is leave saliva on the twigs of the bower. There are two notions here. The bowerbirds' eyes see different wave lengths compared to humans and for these birds the twigs saliva treated are luminous. Whether different birds offer different luminosity etc... you need to consult a bowerbird-naturopath perhaps. But the other notion is that female bowerbirds sample the saliva on twigs in bowers as part of their assessment. So what are we to make of multi-saliva-ised twigs?