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| By Jim Bendon (Flickr: buff breasted paradise kingfisher) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons |
I am back in Mackay for a week or so to while attempting to
dispose of part of the detritus of a lifetime On Sunday I was fortunate enough to have
the opportunity to watch a buff breasted paradise kingfisher (Tanysiptera
sylvia) feeding its young.
The bird had burrowed a nest into a low termite mound on the
side of a hill in rainforest above a creek.
They are fussy about where they place their nests, only choosing mounds where
the termites are active and the mound is between 350 and 500 cm high, no
higher, no lower.
When it flew back to the nest with food for the nestlings,
the calls of the birds inside the nest were like sounds in a kettle – their
cries seemed to be amplified by the shape of the nest. However, maybe they were muffled, and would
have been deafening in the open – I would not know.
As my camera’s shutter sounds like a door being slammed
whenever I use it I took no photos, just sat and enjoyed the 20 minutes or so I
watched the bird as it brought food (which looked like crickets or small
grasshoppers) to its young. So I thank
Wiki Commons for the use of the photo which accompanies this blog.
To call this bird buff breasted, or white tailed, gives no
idea of the splendour of its colouring. Its
beak and feet are scarlet, its chest is golden-orange, it crown and back rich
deep blue with black highlights, and the colour of the long white tail plumes is
echoed on its rump. Black eye stripes
divide and emphasize the contrasting chest and crown colouring.
The bird spends the winters in Papua
New Guinea (PNG) and migrates south each year from late October onwards to the
rainforests of Northern Queensland. Like
many other birds the Paradise- Kingfisher forms “long term pair-bonds” and they
usually return to the same area each year.
They return to PNG in late March/early April.
I am very grateful to those who
made it possible for me to fulfil what has been a three year long wish and allowed
me to sit alone in the tranquillity of a hide in the rainforest and be totally
captivated by the antics of the bird.
Claire Wood
Email: JustClaireWood@gmail.com
Good links to information about the bird:
http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/ZO00090.htm
http://www-public.jcu.edu.au/discovernature/animals/birds/JCUDEV_005202
Below is a link to a good You Tube video but the bird seems to have lost its long tailfeathers - maybe it was at the end of the nesting season.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJUyza2kFx0
Below is a link to a page with several pictures of the bird.
http://www.bushpea.com/bd/pg/all/b/buff-breasted%20paradise-kingfisher%2001.html
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