Last weekend my wife pointed out a channel-billed cuckoo chick being fed by its “adoptive” parents, two crows. Crows are fair-sized birds but the cuckoo was already bigger than either. I’d never seen this before except in books.
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John Quiggin 
At 60cm (Simpson & Day, Sixth Edition), adult channel-bills are pretty big birds. Not surprising that the chick’s mother picked a pair of crows for her offspring to bludge on. Imagine a pair of sparrows trying to cope with the bugger.
THE CBCs are huge cuckoos. I watch them feed in a large fig tree when I holiday in Ulladulla, NSW. I think its about as far south as they go when they migrate. As far as I know they normally target Torresian crow, magpie and pied currawong nests to deposit their eggs. And the chicks are so demanding – overgrown spoilt brats!
About three months ago I saw something that I thought I would never see in suburban Melbourne- a flock a yellow tailed black cockatoos sitting in a neighbour’s hakea tree and cracking open the seed cones. I live in Thornbury which is about 10km from the CBD.
I just managed to get my digital camera and take a photo before they flew off. Hopefully this is a sign of a native animal learning to adapt to a suburban environment.
We need more people, and local governments as well, to recognise the importance of planting native trees, shrubs and grasses to encourage native birds and animals into city areas.
They do love hakeas. Whether the hakeas love them is another matter. It may be that Nature’s Feathered Pruning System actually stimulates the hakea to increase growth, and keeps it compact.
Fan-tailed Cuckoos – one of the common heard birds in east coast bush – use much smaller birds as hosts. Its not uncommon to see thornbills feeding a young cuckoo more than double their size.
Expending your own labour and resources to pay for other peoples kids. It sounds to me like the tax/welfare system makes a good breeding ground for cuckoos.
I thought someone had to make the logical political leap.
At least the tax/welfare system does not throw your own kids out of the nest in the process.
AR, if we are to follow the metaphor where it leads, we see that it describes an effect that some people claim really is happening: people too weighed under to get started with their own homes and families in the first place.
Of course, we cannot see evidence one way or the other, for the simple reason that no relevant data has been sought. But on the one hand it is a plausible outcome once things go too far, and on the other we do know of past times and places where they did indeed go too far, such as under the Speenhamland system.
That at least ought to let us frame the right questions to sort it out one way or the other – if it is ever PC enough to ask them.
I still say the african wild dog ranks as best social animal. In a community of around 100, each hunting dog will engage in high risk tactics that often give them harsh or even disabling injuries. Of course, the risk is borne by the entire community, as all dogs are fed irrespective of hunting prowess.
The end result is a strong community that can bear out hardship and retain a viable population. Conversely, the lion, which is a selfish hunter (they are individual hunters that share a vicinity with others, not pack hunters) has a much lower success rate and as any 7th grader can tell you, occurs in low populations.
Incidentally, african wild dogs occasionally hunt lions. Now what we need, is a dog-occasionally-eats-cat-world, not a dog-eat-dog one.
Sorry PML, you lost me there.
Sometimes a cuckoo is just a cuckoo.
‘Sometimes a cuckoo is just a cuckoo.’
Unless it’s a coucal, the only member of the cuckoo family to build its own nests – endemic to the D’Aguilar range and the western suburbs of Brisbane. Sometimes erroneously called a ‘pheasant’.
Actually the majority of cuckoo species (~74 of ~129) are not brood-parasites
Must the right libertarian turkeys sully this fine discussion of native birds with their raucous squawking?
Can’t you guys flock off to another thread?
The Darebin City Council, which covers my suburb of Thornbury, is currently debating whether or not to get tough on cats. They are thinking about clamping down on cats wandering the streets unaccompanied by their owners.
I think this is an excellent idea. In fact I would go further and require all cats to be desexed other than licenced breeder’s cats.
Ideally cats would be wiped off the Australian continent, however I do accept this would never be acceptable to the general public.
Cats don’t just kill native birds. They also kill reptiles, small native mammals and so on.
In places like the Arid Zone Recovery Reserve in South Australia, near Roxby Downs, native mammals like hopping mice, bilbies, burrowing bettongs and stick nest rats have been able to flourish because they are are protected by a fox and cat proof fence.
http://www.aridrecovery.org.au/
Steve,
I think we can largely agree on that point. Cats and, to a lesser extent, dogs simply do not belong here.
I will have to work out how to achieve that within a libertarian viewpoint, however. Terje – any suggestions?
Libertarian solution for cats:
Solve two problems at once
Sell licences to cat catchers. Pay a bounty for every cat delivered to and released in a declared cane toad infested region.
Cats will eat cane toads before dying of cane toad poisoning.
Katz,
Only problem then is the perverse incentives – there is then an incentive to breed cats (and cane toads) to receive the bounty. Perhaps you could satisfy the gun nuts and the cat eliminators by offering a no-questions-asked bounty on cats shot. This bounty would have to be of a large enough amount to incentivise the shooters but not enough to pay the costs of breeding.
If it can be by public charity then we have a good libertarian solution.
I will look forward to the reports of gun injuries and deaths in the suburbs. Maybe we can put Dick Cheney on to it. I was wondering how I could work that story into a thread.
Perhaps this joke has the potential to get out of hand.
“Only problem then is the perverse incentives – there is then an incentive to breed cats”
This is self-limiting. The program ends when all the cane toads have been eaten.
“breed … cane toads”
My modest proposal provides no direct incentive to do this.
(Did Cheney’s wounded shooting buddie bear any resemblance to GWB?)
I would like to see a mad scientist genetically engineer a virus to exterminate cats. Something along the lines of a cat calicivirus would be nice.
In the meantime a bounty would be good. Bounties have been used for foxes without creating a problem of people breeding foxes in order to collect the bounty.
Katz,
It does provide an indirect incentive – if the cane toads run out before the cats more cane toads would be needed to continue collecting the bounty and vice versa. Of course, throw the positive externalities into the mix and you have a joke that has gone way too far.
I would agree with the bounty concept generally – the problem is funding it and setting up the infrastructure to monitor it. I think the gun nuts would be able to do it just for fun, removing the need for payments and monitoring – just let ’em know they can shoot any cat they want and the results would be quite amusing.
I think the RSPCA might have a word or two about the idea – they objected to the idea of shooting cane toads a few days ago.
To hell with the RSPCA and other animal liberationist nutters. I get extremely annoyed with groups who argue that even pests like cane toads have rights. What about the rights of native animals not to die an agonising death due to the cane toad’s poison?
I’m with the NT parliamentarian who encouraged kids to thump cane toads with cricket bats. This idea about “humanely” killing can toads by puting them in the freezer is a poor joke. Hit the little buggers for six I say!!
Andrew Taylor, I bow to your cuckoo erudition. I was relying upon an old edition of the Queensland Museum’s Wildlife of Greater Brisbane. On reflection, the entry is ambiguous on the coucal’s peculiarity.
I’ve lived with cane toads since they reached Brisbane in the mid-1960s. I’ve never seen a cat get poisoned by one. Many dogs, never a cat. I have occasionally seen young cats playing with them, but not dispatching them.
Andrew Reynolds – ‘dogs simply do not belong here’. Que? They seem to have been here about 20 times as long as European humans and to have done their bit way back then in regard to extinction of native species. There might be an argument about population concentration, but it’s hard to see they’re alien. http://www.bio.usyd.edu.au/staff/swroe/JohnsonWroeCausesofextinctionduringtheHolocene.pdf
Hal,
You will notice I have said “to a lesser extent” – but you are right, the dingo has been here a long time. They are still a human introduced species, however.
Andrew, it isn’t 100% certain whether humans introduced dingos or whether they got here from a land bridge connecting Australia and New Guinea.
Irrespective, the dingo appears to have contributed to the extinctions of many natives, including the mainland tasmanian tiger and tasmanian devil.
Wow! its amazing u have got to see something that u have not seen in reality. It’s great to hear this from your side. Even I look forward to have such encounter with a cuckoo bird.
Wish me best of luck!
Results 1 – 10 of about 58 for “cane toad” poison “kill cats”. (0.64 seconds)
A quick google indicates much literature on the fatal effects of bufo marinus ingestion for felis silvestris catus
Yes it appears that I was placing a foreign egg in a ready nest. I fully expected some of the earlier nest residents to get hostile. Maybe they need to be given a gentle nudge towards the edge.
The firewheel tree in my garden is full of rosellas lately. They seem to be after the nectar. The possums are out in numbers also.
I am a recreational birdwatcher and pleased to see that others who have posted here are also interested in birds.
Sean Dooley in his recent book ‘The Big Twitch’ (Sean saw 700+ Australian bird species in a year, an Australian record) reckons that the surest way to achieve romantic failure is to tell the girl you are dating that you are a birdwatcher. Got something to do with being seen as ‘nerdy’ he reckons.
But I don’t care since I am way past the point of trying to win beauty contests. I am a birdwatcher!
QUOTE: reckons that the surest way to achieve romantic failure is to tell the girl you are dating that you are a birdwatcher.
RESPONSE: if you fail on that single point alone then she aint worth the trouble anyway.
Katz says:
“A quick google indicates much literature on the fatal effects of bufo marinus ingestion for felis silvestris catus ”
The problem is that cats in the wild are capable of learning to avoid cane toads as the mother spends considerable time rearing the young. I note the native water rat has learnt to avoid eating cane toads.
Sadly, the native Northern Quoll doesn’t teach its offspring survival skills and is now almost obliterated from Kakadu. Its last strong hold is the Kimberley region in WA. Thankfully the Government has recetly released some of these critters on some offshore islands which will hopefully prevent their extinction in the event cane toads make it to the Kimberley.
*licks lips*
Raowwlll….
*hunches down into ‘lion’ posture*
The Northern Quoll’s short lifespan makes it vulnerable to toads. Males die after mating at one year old. Only a fraction of females live to breed a second time. Toads aren’t the whole story. Quolls and other mammals were declining in Kakadu before toads arrived – why isn’t obvious. Incidentally dingos and feral cats are the most imporant quoll predators in KNP. I think its optimistic to expect a long-term reduction in feral cat density post-toads.
There are still some Northern Quoll populations in Queensland in areas where toads have been for decades so hopefully some NT quolls are faring better than ones that have studied in KNP.
‘the event cane toads make it to the Kimberley’.
A foregone conclusion in the absence of an effective biological control, I’m very much afraid. I note that toads thrive where humans have disturbed the natural environment – eg cattle hoof prints around waterholes and roadside culverts (http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1460974.htm) provide drought-resistant moist lodging for toads. Toads are far less tolerant of drought than native frog species. So perhaps they’ll not colonize the remoter untracked and unstocked parts of the Kimberley.