Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
It’s Sunday, and we have a themed bird post by John Avise, this time on the runner-up to the “Most photogenic bird” competition. John’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them,
Runner-up to Most Photogenic Songbird?
Last week I showcased the Northern Mockingbird as the most photogenic North American songbird, in my experience. This week showcases my personal runner-up for this honor: the White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys). This species is attractive, relatively tame and very common here in Southern California during the winter months.
Today’s photos come from evolutionist Jody Hey from Temple University. His narrative and captions are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.
The coast of Maine offers a lot of beautiful scenery and some great wildlife watching. My visits there are usually in mid-summer, which if you are inland is not the best time of year for watching birds. However, the seaside has lots of visible action year round. On or near the coast, many of the birds are large, and the sightlines have few obstructions, so getting passable photographs can be relatively easy. Below are some pictures taken at Marshall Point, the location of a much photographed lighthouse near Port Clyde, and the island of Monhegan, home to a small community of lobstering folk and artists, and just a 12 mile ferry ride from Port Clyde.
One day I had just finished my picnic lunch and was walking on the beach facing the harbor of Port Clyde, and saw this Great Black-backed gull (Larus marinus) enjoying its own lunch, an Atlantic rock crab (Cancer irroratus).
The tidal range is quite large in coastal Maine, especially further north and east, so the things to see vary widely throughout the day. Here is a Least sandpiper (Calidris minutilla) exploring the barnacles at low tide.
Marshall point is separated from ocean waters only by a few islands, unlike much of the jagged cost of Maine most of which is some distance from the open ocean. This means that Common Eiders (Somateria mollissima) can be seen there year round. In the summer their markings are fairly dull, but in the winter and spring, they are spectacular.
The ferry ride from Port Clyde to Monhegan offers some great opportunities to see marine mammals, including a couple varieties of seals and Harbor Porpoises (Phocoena phocoena):
Monhegan island itself is less than 5 square miles in area, however the majority of it is owned and maintained as wild land by a private non-profit land trust. Visitors are free to explore the beautiful woods and rocky cliffs that dominate the eastern side of the island, as well as eat and shop in the little village. The cliffs also offer great viewing of a variety of coastal and ocean-going birdlife.
Northern Gannets can often be seen from the cliffs (as well as from the ferry). Here is a somewhat blurry adult, and a more in-focus juvenile:
This Double-crested Cormorant (Nannopterum auritus) obligingly flew directly below me at the same time as the waves were crashing:
The cliffs are also a popular nesting site for Herring Gulls (Larus argentatus):
These Cedar waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) were also at the Monhegan clifftops one day, though the coastal location was fortuitous as they are a widespread and common species:
And closely things out for Monhegan, I go this lucky shot of a Common Raven (Corvus corax) one day, deep in the spruce woods:
Lastly, a lagniappe (as Jerry would say). Not far from Monhegan and Marshall Point is Eastern Egg Rock, home to the world’s first restored colony of Atlantic Puffins (Fratercula arctica). The story of that restoration is fascinating, and now it is apparently safe for the birds to be seen by tourists during the breeding season (from a boat, that is). I took the boat tour one day a couple years ago, just before the end of the season when there were only a few puffins to be seen, but at least I got a picture:
Sunday is John Avise Themed Bird Photo Day, and today we have some favorites of Matthew and me, swallows and swifts. John’s narrative and IDs are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.
Swallows and Swifts
Swallows (Hirundinidae) and Swifts (Apodidae) are aerial insectivores that spend most of their lives in flight, catching insects while on the wing. Despite their aerodynamic body forms and similarities in behavior, these two families of birds are not closely related, but instead gained this lifestyle independently, via convergent evolution. Nevertheless, in a sense their common names could have been interchangeable, because it is certainly true that Swallows are swift, and Swifts do swallow lots of insects. Altogether, each family has close to 100 species collectively distributed worldwide. This week’s post shows several North American species of Swallows and Swifts.
Tony Eales has returned from a safari trip to Botswana, and sends some gorgeous photos. (There will be more, too). Tony’s narrative is indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.
Just recently got back from safari in Botswana. Without a doubt one of the most amazing experiences of my life. The safari was 9 nights with relatively equal time first in the Okavango Delta, then Moremi Game Reserve, then Chobe National Park on the border with Namibia. Finally, we ended up at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe which very nearly overshadowed the whole safari. The Falls are almost incomprehensible in the beauty and awesome power. I took thousands of photographs of beasts and bugs and it’s way more than I could cover in a single email. Today I thought I’d show some of the highlights of the Okavango Delta.
This is dawn of our first day in the delta showing the palms and termite mounds that dominate the dry parts of the landscape:
The delta is one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa and a UNESCO World Heritage area. It is one of the few river deltas that does not have an outlet into a sea or large water body but instead spreads out and disappears into the Kalahari Basin. This is us heading to our campsite in the basin with the indigenous people of the delta:
We obviously didn’t have the safari car in the delta and instead we went on ‘walking safaris’ where everyone stayed in a single file line without breaks for safety and walked out into the plains and thickets. Our guide was a very knowledgeable and fun local called “Master”. Here he is showing us a zebra skull:
There was much to be said for the walking safaris but approaching the animals was harder than it proved to be in the cars. The animals were much more suspicious of people on foot. We heard lions roaring in the morning but on advice of another group we met, it seemed the lions had cubs and would be difficult and perhaps dangerous to approach. We nevertheless saw elephants, giraffes, zebra, buffalo, warthogs, and numerous antelope, in particular countless impala. Here’s an impala (Aepyceros melampus), a waterbuck (Kobus ellipsiprymnus) and some warthogs (Phacochoerus africanus) near our camp:
The star of our patch of the delta was a hippo (Hippopotamus amphibius) who hung out right where we docked the canoes in front of the camp and we could see peeping at us throughout the day:
. . . but the shot we all waited for was the occasional yawn:
Bush Elephants (Loxodonta africana) approached very close to the camp on several occasions. This one pausing for a dust bath:
The birds too were numerous, fascinating and beautiful. African Jacana (Actophilornis africanus):
But of course, my real love is arthropods and it was here in the delta that I found the most amazing bug of the trip. Genus Pephricus, one of the cryptic and bizarre Spike Wilter Bugs:
Also, in great variety and abundance were ants. These ones, known as Hotrod Ants (Ocymyrmex sp.) were collecting dead shells of termites.
After our time in the Delta, we moved to the Moreme Game Reserve which is in the northeast part of the delta and to traditional safari car game drives. But that’s for next time.
Please send in your good wildlife photos, folks. The tank is dropping at a disturbing rate.
Today we’ll feature the second half of Daniel Shockes’s photos from Africa (part 1 is here). His narration is indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them. Here’s his original introduction:
Here are photos from our trip to Africa. Started in Livingstone Zambia, traveled through Zimbabwe, and into Botswana.
Male Lion after a kill. This group had just taken down a baby elephant and was methodically eating it. I do have pictures of them eating the carcass but even dispassionate scientific readers might find it a bit disturbing. Happy to share more if you want (also have great video):
We have a special bonus today: DUCKS AND DUCKLINGS! At my request, UC Davis ecologist Susan Harrison took photos and video for this site when she went out yesterday to help a colleague band, chip, measure, and DNA-sample wood ducklings. Susan’s narrative is indented; click the photos to enlarge them.
Notes From a Wood Duck Research Field Trip
In early June 2023, I accompanied UC Davis’ John Eadie, a leading expert on waterfowl biology and conservation, to measure and tag newly hatched Wood Duck (Aix sponsa) ducklings.
For ten years, John and his collaborators have been studying the social lives of Wood Ducks, especially the striking behavior called nest parasitism. Females (‘hens’) may lay some or all of their eggs in the nests of other Wood Duck hens. Why do they do this? It’s probably related to the fact that they nest in tree cavities, which are a scarce resource. But how do hens decide whether and whom to parasitize? What determines the shifting benefits of raising your own kids versus trying to get them raised by someone else? You can read this lively and beautifully illustrated American Scientist article to find out what’s been learned and what’s still unknown.
We went to a private ranch near Davis where John and his lab have set up 100 of their 400 total nest boxes. Nest boxes help boost Wood Duck populations, and when suitably equipped, they also make it easy to collect data on hens and ducklings.
These ‘research’ nest boxes can be raised or lowered for access, and are equipped with instruments that read the output from tiny radio tags similar to pet microchips:
The first step is to lower and open the nest box to see if the eggs have hatched:
Then the entrance hole is covered to keep the hen inside and the ducklings are carefully extracted:
Each duckling is brought to a mini-lab on the truck tailgate:
Being a good mentor, John is letting me ‘help;’ here I’m holding my first duckling:
Ducklings are slid headfirst into the tube to be weighed:
Bill length, bill width, and tarsus length are measured:
A tiny pinprick allows blood to be drawn for DNA analysis:
A radio tag the size of a rice grain is gently and safely slid under the skin:
Foot color is recorded as tan (left), orange (right), or pure black, since John is curious about this variable trait:
Ducklings then go back to their nest and the seemingly calm hen. Using this combination of radiotagging and DNA, John and collaborators have collected around 3 million data points, each one a combination of an individual duck’s identity, parentage and location. These data have shown, for example, that a hen’s tendency to parasitize is pretty strongly correlated with her mother’s tendency to parasitize.
We stopped at John’s aviary on campus. Here I’m holding Konnie, a Wood Duck hen who was hand-reared and named for Konrad Lorenz, to show off her gorgeous iridescent wings:
In this brief video, Konnie and her mate Crookneck like they are eating but they are actually performing a contact ritual, watched by a Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos). Turn the sound up to hear their squeaky calls and John explaining their behavior. He says many pair-bonding behaviors in birds are ritualized versions of feeding: (Photo 13)
This male Cinnamon Teal (Spatula cyanoptera), less friendly than Connie, energetically nibbled at fingers when picked up:
It was great fun comparing notes with John about research. When I was in grad school learning plant and insect ecology, it was often said that you couldn’t really test theory using birds or wildlife, because you couldn’t do experiments or get large amounts of data. But sensor and DNA technologies have since transformed the study of animals in the wild. And with Wood Ducks, a researcher can deploy their most critical resource – nest boxes – and return later to find abundant and accessible study animals. However, since adult male Wood Ducks are hard to catch and tag, their role in the social network is not yet well understood.
Send in your photos, folx! I need seven batches a week to keep this going (and thanks to those who heed my calls).
Today we have several contributors, the first being reader Don Bredes. All contributors’ words are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them:
Our rose-breasted grosbeaks (Pheucticus ludovicianus) showed up here in northern Vermont this past week. They perch on the deck railing, chirping for us to come out and feed them a few sunflower seeds and waiting, trustingly, right there. We’ve seen only males so far. They remember us, clearly. Rose-breasted grosbeaks can live in the wild for 10 years or longer, twice as long in captivity.
In the fall they migrate from their breeding grounds in North America to Central and northern South America. Most fly across the Gulf of Mexico in a single night, although some migrate over land around the Gulf. Their population globally, now at 4,700,000, is dropping slightly. In their wintering grounds, they are commonly trapped for sale as caged birds because they’re beautiful, and their song is lovely.
We can’t help but wonder about the little neighborhood in Belize or Venezuela where “our” grosbeaks spend their winters and whether another family there may have befriended them.
From Peter, a poisonous juvenile Dugite snake (Pseudonaja affinis) gets killed by a Redback spider (Latrodectus hasselti). He added this:
Two decades ago I took a photo of a redback spider that had killed a small lizard. This is next level up.
A video from Rick Longworth, who says he’s put up a new house for the displaced wood ducks:
Today a pair of wood ducks (Aix sponsa) inspected my duck box for nesting. Unfortunately for them, a Western screech-owl (Megascops kennicottii) had already taken ownership and was sitting on eggs. The woodies both inspect the box and look down the back side where the opening is. The male—the one wearing the tuxedo—looks on as the female makes attempts to enter the hole. Imagine her shock to see two enormous, yellow eyes staring back. Suddenly, a different female shows up. The male is pretty upset and tries to intimidate the interloper. The original female gives up and scurries off. Soon the male leaves too. Music is Kevin MacLeod ~ Fluffing a Duck.
Fortuitously, when I hadn’t prepared any posts for today that require my neurons to work, reader Athayde Tonhasca Júnior came through with one of his patented text+photo stories, this time a fascinating one about how opportunistic natural selection can create predator/parasite niches within niches in completely unexpected and astonishing ways. This hierarchy was wonderfully expressed in the short poem “Siphonaptera” (the order in which fleas are placed) by British mathematician Augustus De Morgan:
Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.
Athayde’s text is indented, and click on the photo to enlarge them.
The body snatchers
by Athayde Tonhasca Júnior
Family feuds abound in history and in the tabloids, but things got really out of hand with the offspring of Egyptian gods Geb (Earth) and Nut (sky). As the first-born, Osiris was naturally chosen to be the ruler of the world. But his brother Set didn’t care one bit for this undemocratic arrangement, so he decided to despatch Osiris to the Underworld. So he set out a murderous plan worthy of an Agatha Christie story. Set first commissioned a beautiful casket, tailored to fit a body with Osiris’ exact measurements. Set then organised a magnificent banquet, inviting heavenly celebrities and bro Osiris. When they were all done with the eating and drinking, Set announced a surprise. The casket was brought in, and the host told his guests that whoever could fit inside, could take it home (an odd gift to us, perhaps, but who are we to judge Egyptian gods?). One by one the guests climbed into the casket, which was too small or too big – until Osiris had a go at it. He laid down inside the casket, which, to his glee, fit him perfectly. Set’s trap was set; he slammed the casket’s lid shut and locked it, killing his sibling. Later Set retrieved Osiris’ body and chopped it into small pieces.
The Mummy (1932) escaped from his sarcophagus, but no such luck for Osiris. Art by Karoly Grosz, Wikimedia Commons:
Set’s shenanigans were the perfect inspiration for naming a new species from the genus Euderus, a small group of parasitic wasps in the family Eulophidae. Most Euderus species are moth and beetle parasitoids, but the wasp discovered by Egan et al. (2017) in Florida (USA) is peculiar, to say the least. Its host, Bassettia pallida, is itself a parasitic wasp, but of a different kind: this species is one of the many gall wasps or cynipids (family Cynipidae), which lay their eggs in oaks (Quercus spp.) and less commonly in related plants (family Fagaceae). The egg-laying induces the plant to produce a gall, which is an abnormal growth resulting from increased size or number of cells (galls can also be caused by tissue feeding or infections by bacteria, viruses, fungi and nematodes). Cynipids trigger their host plants to produce nutritious tissue inside their galls, which become ideal places for a larva to grow: there’s nothing better for one’s survival than a cosy, safe and nourishing nursery.
In the case of B. pallida, it induces the formation of galls inside stems of sand live oak (Q. geminata) and southern live oak (Q. virginiana). Each of these galls is called a ‘crypt’. So appropriately, B. pallida is known as the crypt gall wasp. When the adult wasp completes its development, it chews an exit hole from inside its woody quarters and flies away.
Life looked good for the crypt gall wasp in the southeastern United States—until we learned about the machinations of its recently discovered enemy. The Eulophidae parasitoid locates a crypt and pierces it with its ovipositor, laying an egg inside the chamber, near or into the developing crypt gall wasp. We don’t know exactly what goes on inside the chamber, but the outcome is not good at all for the crypt gall wasp. When it tries to chew its way out, it’s no longer able to create a hole big enough to fit its body: the wasp becomes entrapped inside its crypt, Osiris-like. During its failed attempt to get out, its head blocks the exit hole. All the better for the parasitoid larva that hatched inside the crypt: it can feed at leisure on the host’s weakened body. On completing its development, the adult parasitoid wasp chews through the host’s head plug and comes out to the big wide world. So there was no better name for this species than Euderus set, the crypt-keeper wasp.
JAC: Isn’t that an amazing story? I’m sure we don’t know how the parasitoid disables the gall wasp in this way. Imagine the genetic changes involved in this complex evolution, involving the parasitoid’s egg-laying and multiple behaviors of its larval stage. But that’s a passing expression of amazement; let’s continue with Athayde’s tale:
The relationships between oaks and these wasps are examples of host manipulation, which happens when a parasite influences the host’s behaviour or physiology to its (the parasite’s) advantage. The crypt gall wasp induces its host plants to produce galls for its benefit, and in turn the crypt-keeper wasp forces its host into becoming trapped and an easy meal for the parasitoid’s larva: the manipulation of a manipulator is known as a hyper-manipulation, an uncommon phenomenon.
There are many cases of host manipulation, and the zombie-ant fungus described by the co-author of the theory of evolution by natural selection Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) is one of the better known. This fungus (Ophiocordyceps unilateralis) induces its host ants to climb up the vegetation and clamp their mandibles around a twig or leaf vein. An infected ant will stay put, rain or shine, while the fungus grows inside it. After 4-10 days the ant dies, the fungus grows a ‘stalk’ (stroma) from the ant’s head and releases spores that will infect ants walking about on the forest floor.
The more researchers look into it, the more they find cases of host manipulators such as the Darwin waspsHymenoepimecis spp., which parasitize several species of orb-weaving spiders in the Neotropical region. A female wasp stings and temporarily paralyses her victim, laying an egg on its abdomen. The emerging larva bites through the spider’s cuticle and feeds on its ‘blood’ (haemolymph). The spider carries on with its life, building webs and catching prey, but the growing parasitoid takes its toll; eventually it kills its host.
But shortly before the spider’s demise, somehow —probably by hormone injection—the larva takes command of the host’s behaviour. The spider builds a cocoon web made of thickly woven silk, which doesn’t look at all like a normal web. The spider dies, the larva enters the cocoon and completes its development. Some days later, the adult wasp emerges and flies away.
Parasitic wasps are not deterred by the defences of hosts such as Anelosimus eximius. This is one of the few species of social spiders; they build massive tent-like nests that shelter hundreds or thousands of individuals, who hunt together in raiding packs and even cooperate in raising their young (click the next link to watch their comings and goings). But in the Amazon region, A. eximius can’t evade the Darwin wasp Zatypota sp. A parasitized spider leaves the colony and builds its own cocoon-like web. It then becomes immobilised, so that the wasp larva can unhurriedly consume it. When finished with its meal, the larva enters the cocoon to complete its development. The larger the spider colony, the more chances of being parasitized; up to 2% of individuals become hosts to the parasitoid (Fernandez-Fournier et al., 2018).
Host manipulation seems to be much more common than we thought, so we shouldn’t expect pollinators to be safe from it. And they are not. The conopid fly (family Conopidae) Physocephala tibialis forces bumblebee hosts to bury themselves in the soil just before dying. The nematode worm Sphaerularia bombi, found throughout the northern hemisphere and South America, infects queens of several bumble bee species, castrating its host. And at least for the buff-tailed bumble bee (Bombus terrestris), the nematode also alters the bee’s behaviour (Kadoya & Ishii, 2015). An infected queen feeds normally, but does not breed or build a nest. Instead, she keeps flying into the early summer months, and by doing so she unintentionally helps to spread the nematode. Certainly many other cases of pollinators’ manipulation by parasites wait to be discovered because their effects can be subtle and inconspicuous.
Host manipulation can be seen as a form of extended phenotype (Dawkins, 1982; phenotype refers to a species’ observable characteristics resulting from the expression of its genes). By changing the host’s behaviour for its own benefit, the parasitoid – ultimately, its genes – expresses its phenotype in the world at large. In Dawkins’ own words, ‘an animal’s behaviour tends to maximize the survival of the genes “for” that behaviour, whether or not those genes happen to be in the body of the particular animal performing it’. The phenomenon would have deep consequences for natural selection, but the extent of extended phenotypes has been debated since the publication of Dawkins’ book.
If you are smugly assuming that behavioural puppeteering is for lower animals such as insects, you’d better think again. Some studies suggest that rodents infected with the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii become more active but sluggish in reacting to alarm signals; worse, they may become attracted to the smell of cat’s urine. If so, an infected mouse has a good chance of prematurely ending its days in a moggie’s maw – which was T. gondii‘s ‘intention’ all along, since cats are its ultimate host. And the plot thickens: infected cats excrete T. gondii spores in their faeces, which can make their way into other mammals. A 26-year study with grey wolves (Canis lupus) from Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA, revealed that infected individuals – probably the result of contact with pumas (Puma concolor) – are bolder, more likely to become pack leaders and have better chances of reproducing (Meyer et al., 2022). In humans, toxoplasmosis, the infection caused by T. gondii, is widespread but usually does not have any symptoms. Most people don’t even know they have it, but all sorts of behaviour and mental disorders such as heightened aggression and Parkinson’s disease have been linked to the infection. The effects of T. gondii on rodents and humans have been disputed because data often show weak, inconclusive or no effects (Johnson & Koshy, 2020). In any case, our invulnerability to the manipulative power of parasites should not be taken for granted. Rephrasing the quote misattributed to Margaret Mead, always remember that in biology, Homo sapiens is unique. Just like every other species.
JAC note: I don’t think that in any of these cases of host manipulation (or any others that I’ve heard of) do we know the chemical and developmental basis of the manipulation. What does a fungus do to an ant to make it climb a stalk of grass, grip it tightly with its mandibles, and then die? How does the Darwin wasp manipulate the spider’s behavior to cause it to weave a cocoon-like web instead of its normal web—something good for the wasp? These are incredibly sophisticated manipulations that have evolved in ways we don’t understand.
If this is the work of a creator, he must have been a sadist!
It’s Sunday, and that means a batch of themed bird photos by John Avise. John’s intro and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge them by clicking on them.
“Common” Birds
Several bird species have the word “Common” (upper case C) in their official common name. These are the subject of this week’s post. Oddly, however, not all Common species are particularly common (lower case c), at least in my experience. And, conversely, many bird species that are common do not have Common in their common name. Comprenez vous? The state where each photo was taken is indicated in parentheses.
Today we have a series from Australia by reader Rodney Graetz: bush travel in his country. His captions are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.
Bush Travel
Bush camping is a pleasant way to travel; isolated, sleeping under the stars in a swag (aka bedroll), and awakening to red earth and blue skies. The mosquito nets are ‘just in case’, but rarely needed. Always hopeful to see, or just a hear, a Dingo, the charismatic native dog. On our way from the cool south to the tropical north of the Australian continent:
There was flooding in the arid centre: The Diamantina River was turbid and full of fish. Our crossing was temporarily halted by a dispute between two egrets (Ardea modesta?). Elegant and effortless flyers, with upraised wings, their ultralight bodies are revealed:
Nearby, a juvenile Nankeen Night Heron (Nycticorax caledonicus), with stylish green legs, was concerned at my presence. Its swollen crop indicates the fishing was good. Interesting, because this species is regarded as nocturnal only, no daylight activity:
Big sky, and long straight road country. All unpaved bush roads develop corrugations, but by adjusting speed, their irritating impact is minimised:
At the end of a long travelling day, a camp in the sandy bed of a large ephemeral creek, and a campfire to sit around, talk, and the watch the stars come out. Bliss!
Dawn (aka Sun sight), in the Outback seems slow compared to the Tropics, as it silently lights up the landscape. The dead trees are all Eucalypts (‘Gum trees’) which germinated and grew after a big flood in 1974 and were subsequently killed by wildfire in the 1990s.
Six White-breasted Woodswallows (Artamus leucorynchus)wait patiently for the return of parent birds. Their graceful flying displays are a pleasure to watch, as is their obedient perching behaviour. Perhaps a parent bird says ‘Sit’, and they compliantly cluster and obey:
At one campsite, a mature adult Little Corella (Cacatua sanguinea) was not pleased that we were close to its roosting tree, producing threating wing displays and much screeching. After the 10-minute display, both parties slept peacefully:
A cluster of ibis in their breeding finery. The rearmost two birds are Australian White Ibis (Threskiornis molucca), and the two foremost are Straw-necked ibis (Threskiornis spinicollis), with one displaying iridescent feathering. The large bird is a Magpie Goose (Anseranas semipalmata): not a true goose, and unusual in that its feet are not fully webbed:
Towards the end of the Dry Season (October), wetlands are drying and crowded. The most common bird here is the Magpie Goose. Experienced Tour guides regularly promise their clients the sight of thousands of Magpie Geese at the large wetlands, such as Mamukala:
Because wetlands are so productive, birds cram them, large and small. Here a foraging, tiny Black-fronted Dotterel (Elseyornis melanops) scampers hurriedly past the towering bulk of a mud-covered, preening Magpie Goose:
A juvenile, Black-necked Stork (Ephippiorhyncus asiaticus), commonly called Jabiru, is the only Australian stork. Beginning life as an all-brown bird, when mature, it is bold black and white, with shimmering neck feathers. A skilled stalker of fish and aquatic snakes, and very people-shy:
Perhaps, the most colourful bird in the Tropics, a Rainbow Bee-eater (Merops ornatus) rests on a termite mound after having captured a large wasp(?). They are common in open woodlands: always conspicuous, always industriously reducing the insect population. By the length of its two tail spines (streamers), this is a male bird:
A feeding cluster of Little Corellas, part of a much larger flock of several hundred young and mature birds. Young Corellas engage in endless play, such as mock fighting and teasing, where one bird will grab a toe of another, then try to tip it over. The two birds on top of this termite mound spent hours preening and repelling other young birds who wanted the high perch. This game was continuously repeated at several other mounds. Birds would fly from one mound to another to contest the highest perch:
No matter how hot you feel, you never wade or swim in the Tropical wetlands. Here a 3+ metre estuarine crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), aka ‘Saltie’, taking a close interest in the boat and passengers. Deaths by crocodile attacks average just two per year, and the details of each suggest the deceased almost always deserved their demise. You cannot fix stupidity:
There are many wise sayings with this same message: The best travelling of all is the journey that takes you back home:
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