Arrow marked babbler птица

Arrow-marked Babbler — BirdForum Opus

Adult: Above brown, streaked blackish, with indistinct white spots on the rump and upper tail coverts; below brownish grey, streaked with white arrowhead markings; wings and tail dark brown. Eyes look light orange in the field, but the irises are actually orange with a red outer ring, or yellow with an orange outer ring. The bill, legs and feet are black.

Immature: Buffy; lacks white streaks; spotted dusky below; eye brown.

Distribution

North-eastern South Africa, eastern Botswana, north-eastern Namibia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe and north to Kenya and Cabinda (north-western Angola).

Taxonomy

Turdoides jardineii has eight subspecies that vary in the shade of the brown plumage and in size.

Subspecies [1]

• T. j. emini:

• Southern Kenya, north-western Tanzania, southern Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, adjacent Zaire

• T. j. kirkii:

• South-eastern Kenya to eastern Tanzania, Malawi, eastern Zambia and Mozambique

• T. j. hyposticta:

• Western Angola to western and southern Zaire

• T. j. tanganjicae:

• Eastern Angola to northern Zambia and south-eastern Zaire

• T. j. tamalakanae:

• Northern Botswana, south-western Zambia and southern Angola

• T. j. jardineii (convergens):

• Northern and easterm South Africa, southern Mozambique, Zimbabwe, central and north-western Zambia

Habitat

Thickets in woodland, savanna and secondary vegetation. Also exotic plantations and gardens.

Behaviour

Flight

Flight straight with alternating fluttering and gliding; members of flock follow each other in loose succession from bush to bush. Roosts communally.

Diet

Invertebrates, lizards, seeds, fruit and nectar.

Forages on the ground and in undergrowth in noisy groups of 4-10 birds.

Breeding

This species breeds co-operatively; all members of a group (up to seven individuals) contribute to nest-building, incubation and feeding of nestlings. The nest is a mass of grass and twigs with a bowl-shaped hollow on top, lined with fibres and rootlets. It is usually 3-7 m above the ground in dense cover. Two to five eggs (usually three) are laid October to March in the south and throughout the year through most of its range. Eggs are plain turquoise or greenish blue.

The Arrow-marked Babbler is an important host of Levaillant’s Cuckoo which parasitises 7-8% of nests in southern Africa.

Vocalisation

Voice: Nasal whirring ra-ra-ra-ra-ra, usually in chorus; harsh chak-chak-chak; 1 or 2 birds start calling, others join in crescendo, then calling dies away.

References

1. Clements, JF. 2008. The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World. 6th ed., with updates to December 2008. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0801445019.
2. Hockey, PAR, WRJ Dean, and PG Ryan, eds. 2005. Roberts’ Birds of Southern Africa. 7th ed. Cape Town: John Voelcker Bird Book Fund. ISBN 978-0620340533

• List of references

Recommended Citation

• BirdForum Opus contributors. (2023) Arrow-marked Babbler. In: BirdForum, the forum for wild birds and birding. Retrieved 18 August 2023 from https://www.birdforum.net/opus/Arrow-marked_Babbler

External Links

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Источник

Arrow-marked Babbler

Genus Turdoides (Latin = ‘thrush-like’, ‘like a thrush’ i.e. another type of bird) species jardineii (named after Sir William Jardine)
Shona: Dywedywe or hochahocha. (Both of these sound onomatopoeic: the first is pronounced roughly as ‘Djgwe-djgwe’, which is strongly reminiscent of part of their loud chorus)

This angry-looking bird lives, breeds and travels in groups of between 4 and 12 or so: very noisy, very active, aggressively flicking aside leaves etc. to find insects and sometimes small reptiles. It also eats seeds and small fruit. They are hard to miss and common in Harare suburbs, very frequent visitors in the early mornings and evenings.

They are monogamous, meaning that they mate in single pairs, but co-operative, meaning that the group works together to raise the chicks. As they move together as a group, they are constantly calling to each other, presumably to keep the group together. Their alarm call is very characteristic: starting with an individual bird, it swells and grows louder and louder to a deafening crescendo. Having said that it is “very characteristic”, I have to admit that it might be confused with the sound of the Green or Red-billed Wood-Hoopoe (earlier in this series) which is also a babbling sound rising to a crescendo. But the Wood-Hoopoe is less harsh, more joyful – more like a loud giggling – than the Babbler which is really a cackle.

The group behaviour of birds is interesting, and somewhat like the group behaviour of other non-bird animals. As I have said, these Arrow-Marked Babblers move around in gangs of a dozen or so, like troops of monkeys or wild dogs, constantly chattering among themselves. If you come across a group on the ground foraging for food, look around and you will find one bird sitting in a vantage point, ready to give the alarm call in case of any danger. It’s a sentry, a watchman, keeping guard; they take it in turns to do this duty. Because there are many of them, the young birds don’t have to take up adult duties of foraging for food and defence very early in their lives, as is the case with other birds, some of whom have to fend for themselves almost from the moment they get out of the egg. This means that the young can indulge in kinds of playing, rough and tumble like puppies, though I have only seen this on film and not in the field. For most other kinds of birds, if young birds do ‘play’ at all, it is more directly connected with adult life, mostly to try out and strengthen their wings and wing-muscles and, for birds of prey, practising their hunting and killing techniques.

Look how striking is the colour of the eggs of the Arrow-marked Babbler: what an amazingly, creamily beautiful blue! Imagine a car that colour; or a ceramic jug; or a pair of socks. It is not quite sky- or sea-blue: what is it? No one really knows why the Arrow-Marked Babbler’s eggs are this colour. Eggs are normally coloured for reasons of camouflage to protect them from predators. Birds which lay their eggs straight on the ground or in other vulnerable places need to camouflage them very well, while those that are in less dangerous places, say on ledges of cliffs or in tunnels or holes, colour matters less. The eggs of the Arrow-Marked Babblers would be difficult to hide but it seems that they can afford the risk of such brightly coloured eggs, presumably because they breed in large flocks and work together to fend off predators.

Apart from camouflage, another and opposite reason for the colour of eggs can be precisely to make them very obviously distinct from the eggs of cuckoos and other nest-parasites who lay their eggs in nests not their own. The owners of the nest need to be able to recognise foreign eggs and turf them out the nest. Some of the parasites, meanwhile, have come to produce eggs with colours that mimic those of their hosts, thus getting around the problem. Arrow-marked Babblers, in fact, are the main hosts used by the Levaillant’s Cuckoo, so perhaps this is a reason for the bright blue. If so, it does not seem to be very effective, though, since that Cuckoo seems to be undeterred. But perhaps it has manage to disguise its eggs by matching the same wonderful blue…? How can I find out the colour of the eggs of the Levaillant’s Cuckoo? I have just Googled “Levaillant’s Cuckoo eggs”, and I find that they are, indeed, a very similar shade of blue!

Why do birds’ eggs – or many of them – have pointed ends? Answer next week….

Источник

Arrow-marked Babbler ( Turdoides jardineii, family: Sylviidae)

The Arrow-marked Babbler (Latin name Turdoides jardineii) is described in Roberts Birds of Southern Africa, 7th Edition. This bird has a unique Roberts number of 560 and you will find a full description of this bird on page 812 also a picture of the Arrow-marked Babbler on page 768. The Arrow-marked Babbler belongs to the family of birds classified as Sylviidae.

The map of the Kruger you see on this page shows the areas (coloured orange) where this bird has been identified. The basic information was provided by the Avian Demographic Unit based at UCT and I created the maps from that information . the green dots show the locations of the various Kruger National Park Rest Camps

The Arrow-marked Babbler is neither Endemic or near Endemic to the Kruger National Park. It is however a common resident

In terms of distribution of the Arrow-marked Babbler in the Kruger National Park you may not see it in all areas. Arrow-marked Babbler : see above distribution map.

Identification assistance for this avian species .

The Arrow-marked Babbler is a bird about the same size as a starling. The height of the Arrow-marked Babbler is about 25 cms and its weight is about 72 gms

The male and female Arrow-marked Babbler have the same plumage and colours

• Head is black, brown.
• Eye is orange.
• Bill is black.
• Throat is brown.
• Back is brown.
• Legs are black.

This bird has normally proportioned leg length.

Main diet items for this bird .

The Arrow-marked Babbler feeds on the ground and in foliage mainly

Breeding and nesting habits for this bird .

The Arrow-marked Babbler takes on more than a single mate (it is bigamous).

The nesting habit of Arrow-marked Babbler is to create the nest in branches of a tree or shrub. The bird lays eggs which are green in colour and number between 2 to 5

Habitat and flocking behaviour for this bird .

The preferred habitats for Arrow-marked Babbler are: woodlands and grasslands and riverine areas

You will normally see the Arrow-marked Babbler in flocks.

Names of this avian species in other languages .

For in-depth birding information please refer to these authoritative avian references .

Robert’s 7th edition number . 560

The main reference source for this data was «Roberts — Birds of Southern Africa, 7th Edition» . Other references were «Newmans Birds of the Kruger Park» by Keith Newman published circa 1980 . Names in foreign languages were obtained from the Percy Fitzpatrick Institute of African Ornithology, University of Cape Town website , www.fitzpatrick.uct.ac.za

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