Collared arborebirds

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Collared arborebirds
Brown-bellied bowerbird (Chlamydera cerviniventris)

Brown-bellied bowerbird ( Chlamydera cerviniventris )

Systematics
Subclass : New-jawed birds (Neognathae)
Order : Passerines (Passeriformes)
without rank: Eupasseres
Subordination : Songbirds (passeri)
Family : Bowerbirds ( Ptilonorhynchidae )
Genre : Collared arborebirds
Scientific name
Chlamydera
Gould , 1837

The bowerbirds ( Chlamydera ) are a genus of bowerbirds . There are five species of this genus. All species occur in New Guinea and / or Australia. Apart from the black-eared bowerbird , the brown-bellied bowerbird belonging to this genus is the only one found on both the Australian continent and New Guinea.

All species of this genus show courtship behavior, which includes the construction of an arbor by the male. In contrast to many bower birds, there is no or no conspicuous sexual dimorphism in the species of this genus .

All species are classified as Least Concern by the IUCN . Of the species of the genus, the species that occur in Australia are the brown-bellied bowerbird, spotted bowerbird , drip bowerbird , yellow-naped bowerbird and gray bowerbird that have been studied more extensively. The three-gaited bowerbird , which is limited to New Guinea , is characterized by a slightly different construction of the all.

Position within the bowerbird family

The frilled arborebirds are closely related to the silk arboreal bird , the only representative of the genus Ptilonorhynchus , and the species of the genus Sericulus . All types of these three genera build arbors and that of the " Allee " type . The close relationship with the Sericulus species is also underlined by the similarity of the eggs, the courtship behavior and the silky crown feathers of the three-gang bowerbird.

Characteristics of the genus

Speckled arborebird

The arborebirds are medium-sized to large arborebirds with a body size between 27 and 35 centimeters. The gray foliage bird with its body length of up to 35 centimeters of the largest member in the family of Bowerbirds.

The beak is strong and slightly bent downwards. It is slightly longer than the head in all species and dark in both sexes. The end of the tail plumage is slightly rounded, the control feathers are somewhat stepped and, apart from the drop arboreal bird, comparatively long in relation to the body length. The wings are long and narrow compared to the body size. The number of arm swing is 12 to 14. The length of the legs corresponds to about 26 to 29 percent of the wing length, which is comparatively long compared to the species within the bowerbird family.

The gender dimorphism is only slightly pronounced. The two sexes correspond in height. However, the male has a purple-colored spot on the neck of the drip arborvird and spotted arborist, while the apex of a subspecies is copper-red in the three-gang bowerbird.

Species and their respective distribution area

Gray dove bird
Brown-bellied bowerbird

The following five types are distinguished:

  • Drip arborebird ( Chlamydera guttata ) - apart from the gray bowerbird that occurs in tropical northern Australia, it is the only bowerbird with a distribution area in Western Australia. It populates predominantly arid and semi-arid areas, where it occurs primarily in forests along rivers.
  • Spotted arborebird ( Chlamydera maculata ) - found in the arid and semi-arid regions of the eastern half of the Australian continent. Its distribution area does not overlap with that of the externally similar drip arborebird. The distribution areas of the two species have a gap of around 100 kilometers between 137 ° and 138 ° east.
  • Gray dove bird ( Chlamydera nuchalis ) - The range extends in a wide band from the Kimberley over the Northern Territory to the north of Queensland , where the gray dove bird occurs from the Cape York Peninsula to the city of Mackay on the Australian east coast. It colonizes most of tropical Australia north of 20 ° south latitude.
  • Brown-bellied bowerbird ( Chlamydera cerviniventris ) - is a representative of both the avifauna of New Guinea and the avifauna of Australia . In New Guinea In New Guinea, the occurrence of the brown-bellied bowerbird is essentially limited to coastal areas in eastern New Guinea. It is also found along the east coast of the Cape York Peninsula.
  • Three-gang bowerbird ( Chlamydera lauterbachi ) - is exclusively a representative of the avifauna of New Guinea. It occurs there from the mountain ranges in the west to the Huon Peninsula .

A distinction is made between two subspecies only for the three-gang bower bird and the gray bower bird. The other types are monotypical. The distribution area of ​​the spotted arborebird overlaps to a small extent along the Cape River with the gray bowerbird. Natural hybrids occasionally occur between these two species.

food

The diet consists of fruits, leaves, buds, nectar and, to a lesser extent, invertebrates. The young birds are mainly fed animal protein.

Reproduction

Arbor of the drop arborebird
Males building the arbor
Decorative objects of an arbor: bleached bones, white plastic parts, metal rings and a male with a metal ring in his beak

All species are polygamous. The male mates with several females. The female takes care of nest building, incubation and rearing of the young alone. The nest is a shallow, bowl-like nest made of twigs on trees. The clutch consists of one to three eggs. The incubation period is between 19 and 24 days.

Arbor construction

The frilled arborebirds belong to the arborebirds that erect arbors for courtship, which are adorned with objects that the males often collect according to their color. This courtship behavior is so unique in the bird world that the American ornithologist Ernest Thomas Gilliard stated that the order of birds can actually be divided into two groups: bowerbirds and all other bird species.

All arbors, which are built by the collar foliage birds belong to the so-called avenues to type. In an avenue type, the male erects two parallel walls made of small branches along a slightly raised platform. However, the arbor of the three-flight bowerbird differs from the avenues of other bowerbirds in that it has four rather than two walls. The walls of the middle corridor face outwards, while other avenue builders among the bowerbirds either incline their walls inwards or build them vertically. The middle avenue is based on a thick platform made of branches and grass, which widens at both ends of the avenue. At both ends of the platform there is another wall across the main avenue. The arbor thus has a central aisle and two cross aisles.

Arbor size and arbor decoration

The individual arbors of the frilled arborebirds can become very large. Completed arbours of the three-course bowerbird, for example, have a length of 71 to 97 centimeters, are 48 to 66 centimeters wide and 36 to 64 centimeters high. Including the small pebbles and fruits that the males use to decorate the arbors, the structures weigh between 3 and 7.5 kilograms. In a particularly large arbor of the three-gang bowerbird, more than 3000 branches were built, more than 1000 blades of grass were laid down and decorated with more than 1000 stones with a total weight of almost 4.5 kilograms. The arbors of the drop arborebird are much smaller . Its arbors are on average 36 centimeters long and 16 centimeters wide. The height, measured on the inside of the walls, is 23 centimeters.

The males of all types of arboreal birds decorate their arbors with colored objects. In addition, arbors were found which the male had painted with fruit or vegetable pulp in certain places. When it comes to decorative objects, the males show a preference for certain colors.

Decorative objects are often seed pods, snail shells, flowers, pebbles or bleached small bone fragments. But they also often use decorative objects made by humans, such as glass fragments, plastic parts and even the so-called pull tabs from tinplate cans and ammunition cases. The number of decorative objects attached can be very high. There are always arbors found with more than 1000 decorative objects attached. In an arbor of the drop arborebird examined near Alice Springs , the male used 1427 bone objects, 174 snail shells and numerous pebbles, grail and metal fragments. In total, the attached decoration material weighed 7.4 kilograms. More than 1,350 small bones were found in one arbor of the spotted arborviar , and around 1,900 snail shells in another.

competitor

In the brown-bellied bower bird , the male can be observed near his bower for about eight months a year. In experiments in which a male occupying an arbor was removed, the arbor space was immediately occupied by other males. The male occupying a new arbor space immediately destroyed the existing arbor and built it again. According to Clifford and Dawn Frith, the rapidity with which abandoned arbor spaces are filled indicates that there are more males than suitable places for erecting an arbor. However, the competitive behavior among the frilled arborebirds does not seem to be as pronounced as it is described, for example, for the silky arboreal bird belonging to a different genus . This can contribute to the fact that the individual arbors of the males are significantly further apart. The distance from one arbor of the drip arborebird to the other was between 1.2 and 2 kilometers in arbors examined at the North West Cape .

Arborebirds and humans

Initial description

John Gould, first descriptor of the species.

John Gould described this genus scientifically for the first time in 1837. The first species he assigned to this genus was the spotted arborebird. It is not known where the type specimen was collected. It is most likely from the Liverpool Plains in the Australian state of New South Wales . The gray bower bird described in 1830 by William Jardine, 7th Baronet of Applegarth and Prideaux John Selby , was initially placed in the genus Ptilonorhynchus .

Two other first scientific descriptions of species of this genus come from John Gould: the drip arborvird (1862) and the brown-bellied arborvitae (1850). Although the Brown abdominal Laubenvogel is more common in New Guinea, where many found, comes the type specimen on the Cape York Peninsula . There the scientist John MacGillivray shot a male near his arbor. He also removed the arbor that was sent to London. MacGillivray already stated that 17 days after removing the arbor at this location there was a new one.

Imprisonment

Several species of bowerbirds are shown in zoos. Even if most of them show their arbor house and also courtship in captivity, only a few species have so far been successfully bred in captivity. The brown-bellied bowerbird is such an exception. In 2008 it raised offspring at Cologne Zoo. A single male was kept at the Baiyer River Sanctuary Conservation Reserve , Western Highlands Province , Papua New Guinea, regularly building arbors and imitating the whistles and speech of people.

Spotted arborebirds are also shown comparatively frequently in zoological gardens. The offspring is seldom successful. The Amsterdam Zoo held a spotted arboreal bird as early as 1870, acquired another in 1882 and finally a pair in 1888. The bird, kept from 1870, learned to speak several words and also mimicked noises from its surroundings.

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 .
  • Peter Rowlalnd: Bowerbirds . Csiro Publishing, Collingwood 2008, ISBN 978-0-643-09420-8 .

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Rowland: Bowerbirds . P. 101.
  2. ↑ Rowland: Bowerbirds . P. 91.
  3. ↑ Frith: The Bowerbirds - Ptilonorhynchidae . P. 427.
  4. ↑ Frith: The Bowerbirds - Ptilonorhynchidae . P. 425.
  5. ↑ a b Frith: The Bowerbirds - Ptilonorhynchidae . P. 388.
  6. ^ IOC World Bird List 6.4 . In: IOC World Bird List Datasets . September. doi : 10.14344 / ioc.ml.6.4 .
  7. ↑ Rowland: Bowerbirds . P. 85.
  8. ↑ Rowland: Bowerbirds . P. 88.
  9. ↑ Rowland: Bowerbirds . P. 94.
  10. ↑ Frith: The Bowerbirds - Ptilonorhynchidae . P. 405.
  11. ↑ W. Grummt, H. Strehlow (Ed.): Zoo animal keeping birds . Verlag Harri Deutsch, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-8171-1636-2 . P. 746.
  12. ↑ Jennifer Ackerman: The Genius of Birds . Corsair, London 2016, ISBN 978-1-59420-521-7 , p. 159.
  13. ↑ a b c Frith: The Bowerbirds - Ptilonorhynchidae . P. 391.
  14. ↑ a b Frith: The Bowerbirds - Ptilonorhynchidae . P. 419.
  15. ↑ a b Frith: The Bowerbirds - Ptilonorhynchidae . P. 408.
  16. ↑ Frith: The Bowerbirds - Ptilonorhynchidae . P. 420.
  17. ↑ Frith: The Bowerbirds - Ptilonorhynchidae . P. 389.
  18. ↑ Rowlalnd: Bowerbirds . P. 78.
  19. ↑ Rowlalnd: Bowerbirds . P. 99.
  20. ↑ a b Frith: The Bowerbirds - Ptilonorhynchidae . P. 403.
  21. ↑ W. Grummt, H. Strehlow (Ed.): Zoo animal keeping birds . Verlag Harri Deutsch, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-8171-1636-2 . P. 750.
  22. ↑ Frith: The Bowerbirds - Ptilonorhynchidae . P. 415.

Web links

Commons : Arborvitae  - Collection of images, videos, and audio files