ornithology – wanderwarbler

April 17, 2019May 13, 2019

Hungary: Shake Your Tail Feather

During the first two weeks of April, a fascinating spectacle takes place in the vast planes of the Hungarian Puszta. The Great Bustards are all hopped up and ready to rock and roll. It’s mating season and the males go to dramatic lengths to please the ladies.

A Great Bustard getting ready for display. The Puszta is his lek.

Native to most of Europe, Great Bustards are extremely shy birds, evading human contact by all means since in the run of the past two centuries they have been hunted to the edge of extinction. It’s only due to elaborate conservation efforts that resettle bustards from custody into the wild that the big birds are making a comeback.

No wonder Great Bustards were on the menu before. Males can weigh up to 15 kilos. With a wingspan of up to two meters they’re the world’s largest and heaviest flying bird. Females however are only half a male’s size, and in general, males and females have little to do with each other. Females live separated and raise the youngsters completely on their own. Males live in bachelor groups where they have little else to do but work on their courtship routines. It’s only once a year that they get to meet the ladies and put up their show on the lek – which is the ornithological term for the area where male birds display.

For his display, the male Breat Bustard puffs up his throat poach, which turns his long whiskers up vertically. He draws back his head and neck and turns his tail forward, thereby lowering his wings and erecting his shorter feathers. In this position he looks… stunning. Certainly getting the ladies’ attention. But to be chosen by his critical audience, he needs to do more. Let the dance begin!

One April morning in the Puszta, the Great Burstards get together for the courtship ritual.

Taking turns among the other bachelors, the Bustard gigolo bobs and bounces, literally shaking his tail feathers. Will the elegance and fluidity of his moves, his posing and his attitude charm the females? It’s the Ladies who decide who gets to procreate.

But there seems to be more to the story than good looks and hot moves. By displaying their behinds, males also present their cloaca to the females, a kind of multifunctional hole which also functions as au lieu of a penis. (Yes, bird sex is nothing more than a cloacal kiss in most bird species). So the cloaca’s state is indeed of interest to the females and they appear to inspect it closely.

Two males roughly the same size. Display is also a means of establishing hierarchy in the bachelor group. The displaying bird’s feathers are clipped. He is part of a conservation project

To get their cloaca presentable, male Great Bustards feed on a diet of blister beetles, which are in fact toxic to most animals. Female Great Bustards have not been observed to feed on blister beetles, but males seem to prefer them over any other. It’s a risky habit, but by precise dosage, the beetle toxin will only kill off bacteria in the male’s digestive tract without harming the bird itself. Beauty knows no pain, and a lek is a Great Bustard’s world.

December 27, 2018January 28, 2019

Austria: Chronicle Of A Death Foretold

As of today it’s official: The Austrian Roller is extinct. According to the Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research, there are no breeding couples of European Rollers in areas they thrived in only a few decades ago. The death of a species doesn’t come unannounced. For years, NGOs and even the EU have warned of the imminent loss of the strikingly beautiful bird. In vain.

Coracias garrullus was a gregarious bird, as its name suggest, and flamboyantly colored, its turquoise feathers glittering like emeralds. Together with its close relatives, the bee-eater and the kingfisher, it was one of the few birds that brightened up the otherwise monochrome Austrian bird world. The vibrant group’s evolution can be traced back to the Eocene, some fifty million years ago. Yet it took only thirty years to wipe them from their traditional breeding grounds in Eastern Austria.

European Rollers are loyal to their homes. They return from their South African wintering grounds with unbelievable exactitude – a field, a bush, or a tree the monogamous bird and their mating partner will defend as their territory. If they come back, that is, for this year only non-breeders made their way home.

Fallow grassland in Hungary, where rollers still are abundant.

The bird’s patriotism has not been reciprocated by Austria. Intensive agriculture has eaten away their habitat – there are hardly any shrubs left, bushes or fallow grasslands the rollers need as hunting grounds. Dramatic drop in insect population due to wide spread use of pesticides and the fierce weather condition of the past five to ten years has further reduced chances of survival for the young. Finally, add illegal bird hunting in the Mediterranean – their migration route – to the equation. Life was in deed tough on Rollers.

A lonely kingfisher – the last one of its kind in Vienna…

Despite their challenges, Austrian Rollers stayed picky when it came to mating. They didn’t mingle. DNA research suggests that Austrians never even interbred with their next cousins in neighboring Hungary. But as Austrians they should have known better. The history of Austria and Habsburg Empire has proved: incest leads to decreased adaptability and ultimately extinction. The Austrian royal family practically eliminated themselves by means of genetic deficiency.

Sadly, the current Austrian government not only denies a nation’s need for diversity, but climate change as a whole. European Rollers won’t be the last species we will loose.

To be fair, it is not only in Austria that European Rollers have gone extinct. The birds no longer breed in Scandinavia, Russia and Germany. While their numbers are declining in North Eastern Europe, in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria they are still very common, in countries like Italy or France even increasing – due to conservation efforts like the installation of nest boxes or collaborative programs with farmers.

In Eastern Austria. Rollers and farmers aren’t nemesis. The former actually needs the latter as farmers dig up the beetles for them. It’s industrialized agriculture and the use of pesticides that’s the problem.

In 2015, Birdlife Austria issued a statement demanding immediate action. Rollers, as well as the buntings and shrikes, are under imminent threat of extinction. The NGO pointed towards € 40million that were provided by the EU for Austrian conservation programs but were never put to action. No single politician found the strength to stand up against agricultural lobbies in Austria. The reasons for this lack of political will or courage lie in the conservative make up of Austrian society. Agriculture symbolizes traditional values that, especially in the rural communities, still go unchallenged in Austria.

The red-backed shrike, once common, is also near extinct in Austria.

In 2013, the Albertina, one of Vienna’s most prestigious museums, lent Albrecht Dürer’s highly acclaimed water color Wing of A European Roller to the National Gallery of Art, Washington. It is one of the major nature studies in Art History.

In 2012, Birdlife International called for political action as there are only six breeding pairs of Rollers in Austria left.

In 2010, because the bird was so beautiful and oh so rare – only breeding in one little community in Burgenland, Eastern Austria – the Republic issued a stamp celebrating the bird.

In 2008, the European Union issued the Species Action Plan with the goal to restore the European population of rollers to a favorable conservation status.

In 2005, Birdlife international changed the status of European Rollers from LC – least concern – to NT: near threatened.

In 1520, Albrecht Dürer painted the Wing Of A European Roller. The bird is abundant in Europe and the painter mesmerized by its beauty.

Epilogue:

Please visit the Albertina in 2019, when from September on, the Wing Of A European Roller will be back to Vienna and on display in a special exhibition about Albrecht Dürer’s nature studies. Can’t say Austria doesn’t value its treasures. It practically excels in the art of preservation.

https://www.albertina.at/ausstellungen/albrecht-duerer/

Epilogue 2:

The reason why the wanderwarbler is quite enraged by the extinction of the roller is not only but also that contrary to what the name suggests, the bird in the logo is actually a European Roller.

October 10, 2017

Rome: Watching the Sky

In ancient Rome, augury was the major kind of divination. This included watching the sky, thunder and lightning, but most importantly the auspices, watching the birds. Eagles and vultures were Jupiter’s most important messengers.

Nothing was decided without consulting an augur, a priest who could interpret the flight, the song and dance of birds. Most notoriously, Romulus and Remus settled their dispute on where to found the city of Rome by an augury. Romulus, of course, had the better auspices. He spotted more vultures than his brother Remus, which also granted the former the right to fratricide.

The she-wolf that raised Remus and Romulus against a purple, thunderous Roman sky on the Capitoline Hill, where Romulus founded Rome.

The auspices was restricted to certain species, which are hard to come across in the busy city nowadays. Like in any other coastal city, giant gulls and pigeons seem to outnumber the rest of Rome’s avian population.

A giant gull over-looking his city from the Palletino, the power center of ancient Rome.

Since the Roman Empire extended over a vast part of Northern Africa, tropical birds were imported as sought-after pets. Emperor Nero famously owned an African Gray parrot, Pontius Pilatus’ wife, Claudia, kept lovebirds in a cage, who looked not unlike the Monaco Parakeet.

A Parrocco Monaco sneaking from behind a tree in the beautiful Borghese gardens.

Today’s most flamboyant Roman bird, the gregarious Monaco Parakeet, only arrived in Rome in the early 1970ies. The striking, green parrots have since seamlessly integrated into Italian lifestyle, not causing any harm to local Wildlife, according to the Italian Wildlife Fund. These bright flying jewels color the ancient buildings, which, when built, where not as marble-white, but painted in manifold colors.