Archbold bowerbird
| Archbold bowerbird | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name of the genus | ||||||||||||
| Archboldia | ||||||||||||
| Rand , 1940 | ||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the species | ||||||||||||
| Archboldia papuensis | ||||||||||||
| Rand, 1940 |
The Archbold's bowerbird ( Archboldia papuensis ) is a species from the family of bowerbirds (Ptilonorhynchidae) and is a member of the Avifauna New Guinea. It is the only member of its genus. Its distribution area is in the mountains of New Guinea. In contrast to the bowerbirds found in Australia, the archbold bowerbird's way of life has therefore been relatively little researched.
With a body length of up to 37 centimeters, the archbold bowerbird is one of the largest members of the bowerbird family and is one of the species of this family whose courtship behavior includes the construction of an arbor by the male. As is typical for bowerbirds, there is a striking sexual dimorphism . The female is much less plumed than the male. There are two subspecies.
Archbold bowerbirds are very long-lived and take several years to reach sexual maturity. Due to the intelligence they show when building their arbors, they are counted among the most intelligent of the birds. The IUCN classifies the population of the Archbold Bowerbird as potentially endangered ( near threatened ).
features
Males reach a body length of 37 centimeters, of which 14.8 to 15.6 centimeters are accounted for by the tail in the nominate form . In contrast to the Sericulus species and the silk arboreal bird, females remain smaller than the male and reach a body length of 35 centimeters. The tail accounts for 12.2 to 13 centimeters of this. The beak length is 3.2 to 3.8 centimeters in males and 3.1 to 3.5 centimeters in females. The males weigh between 170 and 195 grams, the females weigh between 163 and 185 grams.
Characteristics of the male
The males have soot-gray to black body plumage. A striking yellow-orange feather hood, which extends from the forehead to the neck, stands out. The arm and hand wings are dark gray-brown, with the hand wings the spring bases and the spring shafts are pale yellow. The large wing covers are cinnamon brown with black feathers. Shortly before moulting, males appear more brownish than freshly moulted birds.
The eyes are dark maroon, the beak is black with a yellow beak inside. The legs and feet are blue-gray.
Characteristics of the female
The slightly smaller female compared to the male also has soot-gray to black body plumage. However, the plumage tone is never as deep black as it can happen in the male, the plumage is overall a bit browner. The plumage can shimmer metallic in certain light conditions and then also has white highlights. The yellow hood of the male is completely missing.
The bottom of the body is slightly lighter than the top of the body. The individual feathers have wide black hems and dark gray-brown feathers, so that the females look slightly scaled up close. The chin and forehead are slightly lighter than the rest of the plumage. The feather shafts are pale gray like the breast plumage.
Characteristics of the young birds
Fledgling nestlings still have downy plumage on their head. Its beak and legs are gray-purple. The iris is dark gray-brown. In the young birds, the males initially show the plumage of the adult females. In subadult males, the plumage shows increasingly individual yellow feathers on the forehead and neck until they then show the full plumage of adult males.
voice
The Archbold bower bird has a very large repertoire of calls, including croaking, gurgling, clicking and whirring sounds. Similar to the gardener birds belonging to the bowerbirds , the archbold bowerbird imitates numerous bird calls from its surroundings. Among the counterfeit Call are those of Papua Adler , Bergloris ( Neopsittacus ) Glanzflöter ( Melampitta lugubris ), various Sericornis species, Rotnacken thick head ( Aleadryas rufinucha ) Gold Streif honeyeater ( Lichenostomus subfrenatus ) Belford honeyeater ( Melidectes belfordi ), furrows bird ( Cnemophilus macgregorii ), narrow- tailed paradise hop ( Epimachus meyeri ) and pennant bearer . The sharp, clicking courtship sounds of the silk arborebird and the widely audible whistles of the column gardener are also imitated .
The Archbold Bowerbird imitates the very powerful calls of the narrow-tailed Paradise Court, which resemble a machine gun rattle, but from the pennant bearer it only imitates the calls of not yet sexually mature male young birds, which are clearly different from the calls of the adult males.
In addition to bird calls, the archbold bower bird also picks up sounds from its surroundings. This includes, above all, the imitation of bird wings, which are opened and shaken. He also imitates the sounds of singing cicadas . It also imitates the rustling noise that dead tree leaves make when they rub against each other in the wind and the noise when such a leaf falls from the tree and falls on the ground.
Distribution area, subspecies and habitat
The archbold bowerbird is found in mountains in central New Guinea. The respective distribution areas are not contiguous and each small due to its habitat requirements. However, it is more common in the areas where it is common.
Two subspecies are distinguished in the distribution area:
- A. p. papuensis - Rand, 1940 - The nominate form occurs in the mountains of western New Guinea. The distribution area includes the Sudirman Mountains , the region of the Paniai Lakes in the highlands of West Papua and the region around the Baliem Valley .
- A. p. sanfordi - Mayr & Gilliard, 1950 - Mountains of Eastern New Guinea. It occurs, among other things, on the southwestern slopes near Mount Hagen and colonizes the southern and southwestern slopes of Mount Giluwe , the highest volcano in Australia and Oceania.
The habitat are frost-prone mountain forests, in which pseudo beeches and stone beeches dominate and in addition there are also screw trees as well as ray aralia and bamboo . The height distribution ranges from 1700 to 3700 meters. It is thus the bower bird with the greatest altitude distribution in its area of distribution: the golden hood gardener occurs at lower altitudes. It partially overlaps with that of the red hood gardener , who occurs at even lower altitudes. Clifford and Dawn Frith consider it possible that the red-hood gardener was displaced to lower altitudes by the more common gold-hood gardener - who is slightly larger with a body length of up to 26 centimeters.
Reproduction
Archbold bowerbirds are polygynous , which means that the male mates with several females. The female alone takes care of the construction of the nest, the brood and the rearing of the young birds. The male woos females by building a columnar arbor. These arbors are occupied by the males for several years, based on ringing data it was possible to prove that a single male occupied an arbor for more than six breeding seasons. Archbold bowerbirds surround these pillars with thick mats of dry colored leaves. The mats are decorated with snail shells, dead beetles, mushrooms, coal and tree wax. Occasionally, the males decorate their courtship area with the ornamental feathers of pennant-bearers , a species of the birds of paradise in which the males have a fifty centimeter long ornamental feather on each side of their head. 6 out of 24 arbors were decorated in this way.
literature
- Bruce M. Beehler, Thane K. Pratt: Birds of New Guinea; Distribution, Taxonomy, and Systematics . Princeton University Press, Princeton 2016, ISBN 978-0-691-16424-3 .
- Clifford B. Frith, Dawn. W. Frith: The Bowerbirds - Ptilonorhynchidae . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-854844-3 .
- Mike Hansell: Bird nests and construction behavior , illustrated by Raith Overhill, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-01764-5 .
- Peter Rowlalnd: Bowerbirds . Csiro Publishing, Collingwood 2008, ISBN 978-0-643-09420-8 .
Single receipts
- ↑ a b c Handbook of the Birds of the World on the Archbold-Laubenvogell , accessed on April 29, 2017
- ↑ a b c d e f Frith: The Bowerbirds - Ptilonorhynchidae . P. 303.
- ↑ Frith: The Bowerbirds - Ptilonorhynchidae . P. 300.
- ↑ a b Frith: The Bowerbirds - Ptilonorhynchidae . P. 302.
- ↑ Frith: The Bowerbirds - Ptilonorhynchidae . P. 301.
- ^ Beehler & Pratt: Birds of New Guinea . P. 279.
- ^ Beehler & Pratt: Birds of New Guinea . P. 280.
- ↑ Frith: The Bowerbirds - Ptilonorhynchidae . P. 289.
- ↑ Clifford B. Frith, Bruce M. Beehler : The Birds of Paradise - Paradisaeidae. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1998, ISBN 0-19-854853-2 . P. 314