Oh, the ingratitude

Everyone has days when they feel unappreciated.
You know how it is: those around you not only take your help for granted, they then go on to presume.
Well this is one of those days for me.

What’s caused this sad state of affairs?
Well, with the summer rain, my garden’s transformed into a jungle. The ‘lawn’ has reached head-height and the local avifauna have moved in.
This is not the problem.
I love watching the common waxbills clamber about the tussocks, scissoring off grass seeds with their redder than red bills. Down below the firefinches and blue waxbills hop about searching diligently for windfalls, and garrulous flocks of red-billed queleas swoop in to chatter and squabble among the trembling seed heads.

The joys of being lawn-mowerless
(Common waxbill, Estrilda astrild)

But these little seed eaters aren’t alone. In the wild mango, a pair of scarlet-chested sunbirds are canoodling, and tucked beneath my eaves, four families of white-rumped swifts noisily discuss the pleasures of the day.
But my grievances don’t rest with any of these critters.
It’s the garden’s tiniest feathered bug-eaters that have earned my ire.

Now tawny-flanked prinias aren’t a species you usually notice. They flit about in the undergrowth, pausing now again, with jauntily cocked tails, to peer around for ill-fated bugs. Only if something’s bothering them do you become aware of their loud and persistent complaints: przzt-przzt-przzt.

Tawny-flanked prinias (Prinia subflava) are Africa’s best attempt at a fairywren. However they’re traditionalists at heart, opting for monogamy and nuclear families. This juvenile was photographed by Neil Strickland.

Tawny-flanked prinias were once thought to flutter over much of Africa, India and east Asia (prinia is the Javan name for the species). However, the elegant inhabitants of the orient have recently gained taxonomic independence (becoming Prinia inornata) - presumably to their huge relief (my prinias could never look this refined).
Photo taken in Taiwan and posted on Flickr by John&Fish.

I was sitting on my veranda one morning, with my dogs and cat sprawled around me, when a prinia fluttered down to perch in a tangle of weeds almost at my elbow. Oh how charming, I thought, as I watched it throw out its chest excitedly and clarion its territorial przzts. It then zipped away, returning a moment or two later with a long, wavering grass stem.
Oh no, it couldn’t be...
Surely, not there...
But yes, it was determinedly twining the grass stem around a weed stalk.
I watched aghast: the creature was building a nest at perfect dog nose-height.

Now please bear in mind that while one of my dogs (Wizard) is a dyed-in-the-wool husky who sensibly eschews feathery aperitifs in favour of whale carcasses, the other is a husky-cross. I don’t know what her husky forebear coupled with, but it was certainly purpose-bred to exterminate rodents. Magic’s blood-lust for small defenceless critters is enough to turn even Wizard’s stomach.
I couldn’t decide whether the kamikaze homemakers, busily weaving a nursery just 1.2 m (4 ft) away from us, were the silliest birds to fly God’s airspace... or the most fiendishly cunning.
What snake, what monitor, what raptor would dare attack them there??

The pair dashed back and forth excitedly, hopping up and down on their toes and eagerly entwining leaf blades into their globe-shaped construction. Every now again one (the male?) would alight exuberantly on a weed top and przzt in triumph (just in case some predator hadn’t noticed them). I’m sure birds feel euphoric when they’re nest-building. These two just looked so, well... pleased with themselves.


Hmm, scissor truss joists here I think...

Both Ma and Pa prinia enjoy DIY but since they favour matching outfits (and both don their glad rags for the occasion (brighter with tail extensions)), I don’t know who this is.

The completed nursery.

I was convinced that sooner or later they’d realise the error of their ways and abandon the whole hare-brained scheme, but after a few days three tiny eggs – salmon-brown mottled with purple – appeared inside the rattan ball.

Having borne witness to this folly, I felt obliged to assist the venture. So, for the last month, I’ve been creeping about the garden, calling my dogs away dozens of times a day, dashing outside whenever a harrier hawk or coucal drops by and generally worrying over the hatchlings’ long-term prospects.

Now I do not expect accolades for this effort. I don’t expect the little creatures to sing my praises or bring me gifts (bugs?) or help with the housework. But their actual response left me speechless.

I was busily working on my computer (I do work sometimes) when I noticed a prinia hopping past the back door. I’d seen them flitting about there before and assumed they were hunting bugs. But this one was carrying something in its beak. It hopped on to the back door step, paused, examined the step with its head on one side, looking first to the left and then to the right, and then it carefully put down its burden – placing it meticulously, just so. It then flew off.

Curious, I went to see what it had been doing.
Bad move.
There, right before my door, was a little moist package of bird poop.
And when I looked closely I realised that the whole step was scattered with small white faecal sacs.They were using my door step as a waste dump for their nestlings’ poop!

Now I know that most birds remove (or swallow) their ankle-biters’ droppings so they don’t attract potential chick-munchers.
But why put the stuff on my doorstep?
Do they think my house stinks so badly it will mask the faeces’ odour?
Why not place the goo further along the veranda amid the piles of swift droppings? 
Why not put it, well... ANYWHERE else??

Sigh.
I’m just NOT appreciated.

Yeah, so?

Masked weavers revealed

If you’ve come here expecting an exposé on the criminal activities of textile workers, you’re in for a disappointment.

This post is about something much less exciting: SEX.

Now I don’t know how you choose your sexual partners, and I wouldn’t dare suggest that anything is inappropriate... But whatever traits turn you on, you can be certain that somewhere out there someone with feathers is already doing it.

Regardless of whether your interest is sparked by a lover’s apparel, their talent in the performing arts, their real-estate holdings, the colour of their footwear (you’d have to be a real booby to go for this), their artistry or – let’s get down to it – the size of their gender-specific endowments (excuse me, I was referring to tail plumes), your tastes don’t differ from millions of birds.

But there’s one group of feathered critters whose predilections are genuinely perverse.
For them, sweaty singlets and wolf-whistles are all the go.
That’s right; construction workers rule the roost in weaver society.

Now if DIY skills were the currency of ardour in humans, I’d be destined for barren spinsterhood (hey, wait a minute, I am a barren spinster...). Although home-building skills may seem a tepid way to woo a lover, it hasn't held back weavers. Around 62 species (all in the genus Ploceus) are out there busily knocking up their edifices, mostly in Africa but also in southern Asia too.
And with all the recent rain, a large proportion of these creatures seem to be doing it right here.

A macho lesser masked weaver (Ploceus intermedius) kitted out for love. He only dons his mask - in bad-boy warning colours - when the talent weather is hot.

Gathering in rowdy hordes in trees overhanging water, the local lesser masked weavers are in a state of frenzy.
Males dash back and forth with long grass stems trailing from their bills, and there’s a constant buzz of chirping and squawking, which swells periodically into a goal-score roar when a flirtatious chick drops by.

Before a weaver on the make can fabricate an alluring boudoir, he must first stake out his own patch within the colony. This involves lunging at intruders and grappling tooth and nail beak and talon with any persistent rivals. Once he's scored an exclusive building site, Romeo gets to work weaving a collection of finely-laced, retort-shaped homes (if you're not a closet alchemist, a retort is a glass flask with a spherical base and a long tapering neck that's bent downward; it’s designed for distilling things). The male’s goal is to distil a harem of lady tenants who’ll considerately raise his chicks for him.

Using only fresh green grass, plucked straight from the clump, he twists and pokes and pulls, entwining the strips intricately, while emanating an air of intense and bad-tempered concentration. As the grass strands dry, they shrink, tightening up the weave and strengthening the structure. But with nest sites at a premium, a male can’t afford to keep any untenanted premises on his books, so pissed-off males demolish nests that have proven unpopular.

In the quest for the most beguiling nest, males also indulge in a bit of landscape gardening, clipping the leaves from all branches near their homespun abodes. This - along with the nest’s funnel entrance - is thought to make things tricky for those iniquitous nest robbers, the harrier hawk and the boomslang.

‘These damn things just keep growing BACK!’

‘Well, that’s an improvement anyway.’

When a lady weaver approaches, all the males get very excited, snatching up a grass stem and dashing to their best construction. Hanging from the base, a hopeful male flutters his wings enticingly, sticks his tail out horizontally and points his beak suggestively into his nest. He also chirps in a frenzied manner (precise translation unavailable, but I daresay you know all the usual pick up lines...).

‘If you come in here, you can see the playroom has a northerly aspect...’

‘I think someone should really tell George that the can-can is so yesterday.’

For any inept handymen out there, consoling themselves that bird's nest-building skills are hardwired anyhow, let me disabuse you. Male weavers must learn their trade.

While yearling females rush headlong into motherhood, their brothers eschew sex for a year or two. These young bloods get together in colonies of their own where they can work on their erections without censure. Experiments show that if adolescent males are deprived of this early practice (by denying them building materials), their DIY skills are seriously retarded. However, just like riding a bicycle (which you may be please to know male weavers cannot do), building prowess - once learned - is never forgotten; even if callous researchers blockade building supplies for years on end.

Slipshod workmanship will not escape the eye of a lady lesser masked weaver. However, the landlord's only responsible for creating the nest’s outer walls; all soft furnishings must be provided by the tenant.

But what does today’s lady weaver seek in a family residence?

Researchers working with village weavers (Ploceus cucullata) found that mothers-to-be aren’t swayed by outward appearances; neatness and closeness of weave are, after all, mere superficialities. What counts is the strength of the materials and the newness of construction. The girls will have no brook with old, browned off nests and, like master chefs, they’re canny at detecting what’s fresh and what’s not. Merely painting a good nest brown will not fool them, although the same cannot be said for males, who are three-times more like to demolish a nest if it’s been artificially dyed brown.

‘Hmm, I do like a Paspalum veneer; it gives a much fresher ambience than the traditional Poa finish...’

‘Yes Martha, I’ll join you in a mo’. That little minx Estella is looking real interested in Number 3.’