Is your birdbath full of Piccabean Palm seeds, again? The red seed coating is gone. Little piles of fibrous balls adorn the surfacesthe back deck and yes, more piles are dotted around the yard close to water sources, on the paths, in the beds, contributing to the ongoing battle between plants and weeds.
Who is the architect of this chaos?
The Pied Currawong is a frequent back yard visitor to Kurilpa. This tuneful crooner moves around the peninsula in garrulous groups of 3-15. Black and white as its name suggests, it is an omnivore devouring berries, grubs, small mammals and lizards throughout the year. Unlike the Magpie, whose size and shape is very similar, it has a yellow eye and it lifts its tail when it lands on a perch.
Its song is a mournful lilt differentiating it from the fluted warblings of its cousins the magpie and butcherbirds. It also makes a sharper whistling call almost saying its name twice: currawing, currawong. Its voice punctuates the morning chorus from pre-dawn right through the day to dusk and it is also often heard calling throughout the night – it is late to bed AND early to rise.
While its adulthood is spent eating everything, as a youngster, it eats mostly meat. This carnivorous urge means the parent birds are feared and loathed universally in the neighbourhood. Smaller bird nests are raided up to 30 times to feed each of the Currawong’s young,
However, all is not so sweet for the Currawong. It is also prey to the vagaries of the Channel Billed Cuckoo . The cuckoo gang will bluff the Currawong parents away from their egg-filled nest on a fight for territory ruse only to open the door for a female cuckoo to lay a set of eggs in the nest and let its young outcompete the Currawong’s.
Figure 2: Photo credit: Pablo Silber – Currawong at the bird bath, West End, 2021
And the Piccabean Palm seeds? Mystery solved: I watch a Pied Currawong drink, and drink, and drink some more of my freshly poured water. All of a sudden, with a mighty bird burp, up come the seeds and I need to clean my birdbath, again.
For more info on the bird song and also the bird itself: https://xeno-canto.org/species/Strepera-graculina
The Bird Nerd, Kurilpa
