On Babblers; (or babbling on)

Babblers are surely among the most engaging of Australian birds, loud, rollicking highly communal larrikins, streaming across the ground between shrubs in the semi-arid scrublands. At night they pile into big stick sleeping nests and in the morning they tumble out like the impossible number of circus clowns from a small car. 

White-browed Babbler Pomatostomus superciliosus, Cocoparra NP,
mid-western New South Wales. The strong legs for bounding across the ground,
conspicuous eyebrow and sturdy down-curved bill are all characteristic of the group.

Until quite recently, perhaps until the early 1980s, it was assumed that our babblers were in the same family as the Old World Babblers; in fact Timiilidae was, for much of the 20th century, used as a big grab-bag in which to stuff a whole range of 'difficult' bird groups.

The Old World Babblers as then understood are found across Africa and southern Asia.

Chestnut-rumped Babbler Stachyris maculata, Bako NP, Sarawak, Borneo.

However modern DNA work has shaken the whole babbling world upside down, and the once-huge Timaliidae family is a mere shadow of its former self, being divided into five families. Many of the babblers and their close allies are now in the family Leiothrichidae, which has nearly 150 species. Here are some of its members, some called babblers, others bearing other names but still understood as 'babblers'.

Black-lored Babbler Turdoides sharpie, Tarangire NP, Tanzania.

Northern Pied Babbler Turdoides hypoleuca, Thika, Kenya.

Chestnut-hooded Laughing-thrush Pterorhinus treacheri, Mt Kinabalu, Sabah, Borneo.

Rufous Chatterer Argya rubiginosa, Buffalo Springs Nature Reserve, northern Kenya

Meanwhile however, back in Australia it was being realised by around 1980 that 'our' babblers, far from being a colonial offshoot of a widespread northern family, were in fact ancient Australians, totally unrelated to the 'other' babblers. It had been a shock when it was announced that Australian treecreepers were perhaps as old as, or older than, the lyrebirds; now it is proposed that the babblers could be even older. 

Enough of the family tree though, let's just meet the babblers (and from now on by 'babblers', I mean only the Australian ones). There are four species in Australia, all in the genus Pomatostomus, and a fifth found only in New Guinea. Two of them have huge ranges across Australia. The White-browed Babbler which we met earlier is more southern, while the Grey-crowned Babbler P. temporalis is found right across the tropics (and to a limited extent across the Torres Strait on the nearest section of the New Guinea coast). In addition it follows the woodlands deep into the south-eastern interior. The other two - of which more anon - have more limited, though still substantial, ranges.

All live in groups of up to 20, feeding in a scattered flock but keeping together when they move on. They will search litter and low shrubs for invertebrates, often probing bark. 

Grey-crowned Babblers P. temporalis foraging;
on the ground in Alice Springs above,
in low bushes at Longreach Waterhole, Northern Territory, below.

All are strongly - and probably solely - cooperative breeders with a dominant pair supported by both male and female helpers. (This is a bit unusual, in that in most cooperative breeders allow only male helpers.) The helpers are mostly siblings or adult offspring of the dominant pair. Without them, breeding success is very low.

As mentioned, babblers are incorrigible avachats (if you're not Australian and unfamiliar with the term, just sound it out by syllable - you'll get it). Grey-crowneds are especially vociferous and the bellowed YA-HOO back and forth chorus (technically 'antiphonal duetting') between dominant male and female echoes through the woodlands. Here is a selection of their calls; the third is a good introduction. Click the arrow at the start of the row; sometimes you have to click it more than once. 

This is a bold and familiar species (which is not true of all babblers), often found in close proximity to station homesteads. For this reason they have attracted possibly the greatest number of vernacular names of any Australian species. In our book (Australian Bird Names; origins and meanings, CSIRO Publishing, second edition 2019) Jeannie Gray and I list the following alternative names that we know to have been used in print. Temporal or Three-banded Pomatorhinus, Temporal Babbler, Apostlebird, Twelve Apostles, Happy Family, Barker, Cackler, Quackie, Cur-Cur, Catbird, Dog Bird, Chatterer, Grey-crowned Chatterer, Red-breasted Babbler, Rufous-breasted Chatterer, Yahoo, Pine Bird, Happy Jack, Fussy, Hopper, Hopping Dick, Hopping Jumper, Codlin-Moth-Eater. For a discussion of each of these you'll have to have a look at the book I'm afraid! Note though that Apostlebird is more usually used for an unrelated inland cooperative breeder.

There are two clearly different colour races of Grey-crowned Babbler; in central and northern Australia is the rufous-breasted form, subspecies rubeculus...

Rufous-breasted form, Alice Springs.

... while elsewhere the 'nominate' form temporalis is white beneath except for the belly.

Southern, white-chested form, Lake Cargelligo, central western New South Wales.

The species itself is readily identified; it is larger than the others and the narrow grey crown is sometimes almost crowded out by the hugely flaring eyebrows. When it flies the rufous panels in the wings are obvious. And it yahoos...

Grey-crowned Babbler, Longreach Waterhole, Northern Territory.
The eyebrows almost meet in the middle.

White-browed Babblers have a huge range across southern Australia, mostly south of the tropics, from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean and south to the Southern Ocean. They are found in habitats from drier forests and woodlands to the arid plains. They are smaller and 'neater' than Grey-crowned and while inevitably chatty, are not quite as noisy though their chattering can become hysterical. See here for many examples; the first one is good for the wild chattering, while the third clearly shows the characteristic 'clucking'. The eyebrows are much narrower than those of the Grey-crowned, and the evident crown is dark not pale grey. They are white beneath, down to the legs, and there are no obvious wing panels when they fly.

White-browed Babbler, Shark Bay, Western Australia.

The third species, Hall's Babbler, went unnoticed for a long time due to its passing similarity to White-browed Babbler, but it really is surprising that no-one had noticed it until 1963! That was when one was 'collected' during the first of the five controversial Harold Hall Australian Expeditions on behalf of the British Museum during the 1960s. Hall was Melbourne-born but British-educated, and used his wealth to assist museum research. The controversy stemmed from the quite unambiguous aims of the expeditions, which were to shoot very large numbers of Australian birds, to replenish museum stocks after they'd sold off a couple of major collections to the US. South-west Queensland, where the first specimen had hitherto lived, remains its most-cited location, but it ranges well north and east from here, and south into New South Wales as far as Mutawintji NP north-east of Broken Hill. It favours dry acacia woodlands, often tall and especially Mulga Acacia aneura.

Hall's Babblers P. hallii, Idalia NP, central southern Queensland.
Compare them with the White-browed photo above. The eyebrows are much broader
and the crown consequently narrow, and most obviously there is a sharp dividing
across the breast between white throat/upper breast, and lower breast/belly.

They aren't particularly shy, but they don't appreciate being pushed too hard; if you go too quickly towards them they are likely to flee. And you can very easily get lost following babblers in tall Mulga woodland!

Finally, the most distinctive and possibly the most attractive of the quartet. Chestnut-crowned Babblers P. ruficeps live in dry, often sparsely-vegetated areas in the western Murray-Darling system and the Lake Eyre Basin.

Chestnut-crowned Babbler, near Broken Hill. The distance of this photo reinforces my
belief that this is the hardest babbler to approach. They seem to flee before you
can get as close to them as to the others - and even that's often not easy.
Nonetheless the key features are evident here - the two white wing bars, unique among
babblers, and the rich chestnut crown. They can't really be mistaken.

Babblers to me are one of the delights of any trip inland. The first ones, flying off the road or streaming alongside the car in roadside vegetation, are a welcome affirmation that we really are finally heading west and north again. 

And their cheerful larrikinism is definitely appealing; of course we might expect that (if we were shamelessly anthropomorphic) given that they are perhaps the most ancient of Australian songbirds.

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