A World of Herons: #2

Here I am again to complete last week's post on herons, a significant component of wetlands and waterways throughout most of the world. Having offered an overview last time, I want to introduce the groups and some representative species. I confess to feeling quite under the weather at present (no, not self-inflicted!), so this might turn out a little sketchier than intended - though concentrating on something as pleasurable as this topic could also take my mind off minor life-annoyances.

The taxonomy of herons is a very fluid situation, with changing understandings - and of course disagreements, that being the proper nature of science - at all levels, from delimitation of some species, to which species belong in which genera, to the basic breakdown of the family into subfamilies. As ever, I rely for taxonomy on the International Ornithological Congress (IOC) list - not because I think it's automatically the 'best' (inter alia I have no qualifications to judge it by) but because we all have to settle on one taxonomy and stick to it, and because they are excellent at keeping their lists updated, with reasons and references. (The IOC list doesn't concern itself with subfamilies, though the order of species they use can help us to deduce relationships to a large extent.) For most of us of course it doesn't really matter, though I find relationships interesting, and for a large family like this one it can help to subdivide. 

Having said that, three of the subfamilies are relatively small, so subdivision per se isn't so useful here for breaking a large whole into more manageable chunks.

Tiger Herons and Boat-billed Heron; subfamily Tigriornithinae

This is an interesting and attractive small grouping comprising three species of South American tiger-herons, plus three somewhat enigmatic and far-flung single-species genera (the Boat-billed Heron from South America, the Forest Bittern (yes, I know it's confusing!) of New Guinea and the White-crested Tiger Heron of central and west Africa).

Fasciated Tiger-Heron Tigrisoma fasciatum Peruvian Amazonia; this species is more
typical of forested streamsides higher in the Andes.

Rufescent Tiger-Heron T. lineatum, Yasuní NP, Ecuadorian Amazonia.

Boat-billed Heron Cochlearius cochlearius, Ecuadorian Amazonia.
A remarkable bird, active at night or evening so not easy to find.
The extraordinary bill is used as a scoop, unlike any other heron's.
It has until recently been regarded as belonging to a separate family altogether, but it is now generally accepted that
it is a true heron, and in the Tiger-Heron subfamily.

Bitterns: subfamily Botaurinae

The bitterns are secretive stocky herons of the reedbeds, 10 small species and four large ones (comprising two separate genera), plus the unusual rainforest Zigzag Heron of the Amazon basin. The large bitterns especially, which between them are found on all continents, emit dramatic booming calls during mating season, which can echo for kilometres. The name derives originally from a Latin term incorporating taurus, a bull.

Australasian Bittern Botaurus poiciloptilus, McKellar Wetlands, Canberra.
When I posted this pretty ordinary picture on the Canberra Ornithologists' Group's email line in 2014,
it was the first photo ever published of this species taken in the ACT.
The last record was over 70 years ago - no-one living had ever seen one here before (I hasten to say
that I wasn't the one who found it).
There are estimated to be less than a thousand left in Australia, perhaps the same in New Zealand,
and apparently none survive in New Caledonia.

Black Bittern Ixobrychus flavicollis, Kakadu NP, Northern Territory.
This is the largest of the small bittern genus, and is found from Pakistan to China to Australia.
It is rather less cryptic, and rare, than the previous species.
The big feet, common among herons for walking on wet ground, are also used by bitterns to climb up reed stems.

Black-backed Bittern I. dubius, Jerrabomberra Wetlands, Canberra.
I only enclose the top photo to give an idea as to what we actually see; below is a close-up.
This species is an Australian endemic, only relatively recently accepted as separate from the Little Bittern I. minutusof Africa, Eurpe and Asia.

 

Night Herons: family Nycticoracinae

This is the only contentious subfamily - there is some evidence that it should be subsumed into the day herons (below) but it is far from conclusive.

As you'd expect the birds are mostly nocturnal, roosting by day in trees near water. They are voracious predators - aviary birds are very scared when they're around.

Nankeen Night Heron Nycticorax caledonicus, adult and immature, Jerrabomberra Wetlands, Canberra,
in very dim dawn light. Found from Australia to the Philippines.
As well as fish they take eggs and chicks of other herons, terns and ibis, and will turn to hunting mice on dry land,
even in towns, during plagues.

Yellow-crowned Night Heron Nyctanassa violacea, Guayaquil, Ecuador.
This species is found in the Americas, including the Galápagos, mostly in near-coastal tropics and subtropics.

Black-crowned Night Heron Nycticorax nycticorax, Isla de Chiloé, Chile.
This is a bird with a huge distribution, found in every continent except Australia.

Day Herons; subfamily Ardeinae

This is by far the largest heron subfamily, comprising some two thirds of all species. It is dominated by two largish genera, each with around 12 species, though there is still dissent as to which species belongs where. Let's just go through some of them.

          Genus Ardea

The Great Blue Heron A. herodias (here on Santa Cruz, Galápagos) is found throughout North and Central America.
It is one of the biggest herons in the world.

Black-headed Heron A. melanocephala, Entebbe Botanic Gardens, Uganda.
Found across most of Africa, where it is unusual among herons in feeding mostly on land.
Rodents, birds, reptiles, frogs and invertebrates form important parts of its diet.

Cocoi Heron A. cocoi, Manu River, Peruvian Amazonia.
Cocois can be found on almost any non-montane waterway in South America;
the name is from an indigenous name for it from the Caribbean area.

Purple Heron A. purpurea, Limbe Botanic Gardens, Cameroon.
This one has a very wide range across Africa, Europe and southern Asia.

White-necked Heron A.pacifica, Bladensburg NP, central Queesland.
I find this a very handsome big heron, which occurs across Australia; hence the former name
of Pacific Heron was dropped as being inappropriate.

Great Egret A. alba, Jerrabomberra Wetlands, Canberra. This familiar heron is a world-wide species
(though it wouldn't surprise if the American populations were split off as a separate species).
There seems also to be a possibly inexorable move towards placing both this species and the next in their
own separate genera.

Intermediate Egreat A. intermedia, Fogg Dam near Darwin.
Another cosmopolitan species; see comment above re the moves to elevate it to a single-species genus.
Highly regarded authorities have proposed splitting it too, with both African and Australian birds removed
to create three species.

            Genus Egretta

The other large genus in this subfamily, on average comprising smaller species.

Little Egret E. garzetta Cairns, Queensland.
Yet another very widespread species, found everywhere except the Americas.
Where most herons are patient sit-and-wait hunters, the Little Egret dashes about frenetically.

Pacific Reef Heron E. sacra, Fraser Island, Queensland.
Here both colour morphs occur together; to the north most birds are white. with dark ones to the south.

White-faced Heron E. novaehollandiae, Canberra, the commonest and most ubiquitious heron
in Australia, found from desert waterways to farm dams to wetlands everywhere, and on the coast.
It has been suggested too that it is the most generalist heron in the world, feeding in fresh water, on beaches
and reefs, and in dry paddocks.

Immature Pied Heron E. picata, with Eastern Swamphens and Glossy Ibis, Kakadu NP.
Adults have a black cap and nape. A tiny heron, common across northern Australia and in
New Guinea and associated islands.

Little Blue Heron E. caerulea, Arica, northern Chile.
An elegant little heron found from the southern United States to the warmer coasts of South America.

Snowy Egret E. thula, also at Arica.
A very wide American range, covering the southern half of North America and most of South America
except for the Andes. I love the yellow feet!

          Smaller genera of day herons

Finally there are a number (around six) of day heron genera with between one and six species. The largest of these comprises the pond herons, six species of mostly Asian or African small solid herons.

Squacco Heron Ardeola ralloides, Queen Elizabeth NP, Uganda. This is a non-breeding bird,
as the breeding plumage is a rich non-streaked orange-buff.
One population breeds in eastern Europe and western Asia, and ovewinters in sub-Saharan Africa;
here it joins another permanent population.

Western Cattle Egret Bubulcus ibis, Benoué NP, Cameroon.
This species and the next have recently been split, though this is not universally accepted.
This confuses the story of how the species spread throughout the world.

Eastern Cattle Egrets B. coromandus with Water Buffaloes, Sabah (above)
and with domestic cattle, Nowra, New South Wales (below).
These birds are in their lovely breeding plumage.

Striated Heron Butorides striatus Galápagos, adult above, juvenile below.
This species also has a huge distribution, across South America, Europe, Africa and Australia.
(See here for a photo of the Australian subspecies, from last week's posting.)
However until recently this distribution was even greater, with North and Central American birds also included
(they are now known as Green Herons B. virescens).

Lava Heron B. sundevalli, Santa Cruz, Galápagos.
This bird too was until recently included in the same world-wide species
but is now seen as a Galápagos endemic.

Capped Heron Pilherodius pileatus, Yasuní NP, Ecuador.
A little-known and scarce heron, with a wide tropical distribution east of the Andes;
the only one of its genus.

Finally (!), another very lovely single-species genus from the Amazon basin rainforests. The Agami Heron has been placed at times with the Tiger Herons, or even cast from the entire heron family! That is not generally accepted now though.

Agami Heron Agamia agami, Yasuní NP, Ecuador.
This is a bird of which we know sadly little - I feel privileged to have even seen one.

Well I hope you're not sick of herons yet - after all, though I've told you all that I'm going to, there are a lot of them out there to enjoy!

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A World of Herons: #1

I've just noticed that I haven't offered a post focussing on birds since last September, so it's probably time to rectify that. Herons form a single family of some 64-72 species, depending on your preferred taxonomy. They are found in nearly all unfrozen parts of the world, other than the deepest deserts and highest mountains, and are familiar to most people who take an interest in such things. 

They are very interesting birds (but what bird isn't?!), so I'm going to spread this topic over two weeks; today I'll introduce the general characteristics and history of the family and next week look at the sub-groups and representative species of each. Regarding the latter, suffice it to say for now that the general opinion is that there are four recognisable subfamilies - day herons, night herons, bitterns and tiger herons.

It is an ancient group, traceable back at least 55 million years. They are essentially water birds, though some, and notably the two species of cattle egret, forage in dryland pastures. They are, with variations, long-legged and long-necked with a long straight bill; all are carnivores subsisting, naturally enough, mostly on aquatic animals. A characteristic is a strongly kinked or S-shaped neck, due to an elongated sixth vertebra, which enables the neck to be retracted and hurled forward like a harpoon.

Great Egret Ardea alba, Jerrabomberra Wetlands, Canberra,
displaying the typical heron characters including the neck kink.
(Pity about the shadow!)

Which leads us to the 'heron vs egret' issue, which is indeed a non-issue. We simply, by convention, use 'egret' for a heron which happens to be white. (Both words have related origins in old European languages, reflecting the harsh calls typical of the family; for instance when the French hayroun entered English in the early 1300s it replaced the related Old English hragra. 'Egret' was a diminutive (perhaps for the Little Egret) of older French aigron, again from the same root.)

There is no taxonomic relevance to the terms; consider the following pairs of birds. 

Great Egret Ardea alba and Little Egret Egretta garzetta Cairns, north Queensland;
two egrets, two genera.

Snowy Egret Egretta thula Arica, northern Chile (above) and
White-faced Heron Egretta novaehollandiae Canberra (below).
Egret and heron, same genus.

 

They hunt either from the bank...

White-faced Heron, National Botanic Gardens, Canberra.

... or standing in the water.

Capped Heron Pilherodius pileatus, Peruvian Amazonia.

Little Blue Heron Egretta caerulea, Arica, northern Chile, attacking fish.

They will often stand upright, like these three, to get a broader perspective, or crouch to be less conspicuous and closer to prey.

Striated Heron Butorides striata, Fraser Island, Queensland.

Most species are primarily fresh-water specialists, but others can also be found on the seashore, in addition to those like the Striated Heron and the reef herons which are nearly always seen there.

Pacific Reef Heron Egretta sacra, south coast New South Wales.

 The next two are definitely part-time beach-goers.

Great Egret in the sea, Cape Hillsborough NP, central Queensland.

Great Blue Heron Ardea herodias, Fernandina, Galápagos.

The Black Heron Egretta ardesiaca of Africa is famous (via documentaries) for 'mantling' its wings to shadow the water, either to attract prey into the shade, or to protect its vision from light reflecting off the water. However this is not the only species to adopt the practice, though it is not otherwise common.

Lava Heron Butorides sundevalli hunting, Isabela, Galápagos.

Flight is strong, with trailing legs but pulled-in neck, a distinctive pose. Compare the two herons below in flight with an example of both a crane and a stork, superficially similar birds to herons.

White-faced Heron, James River, Barkly Tablelands, Northern Territory.

Great Egret, Cairns, north Queensland.

Brolga Grus rubicundus, Clermont, central Queensland.

Black-necked Stork Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus, Cobbold Gorge, north Queensland.

Nests may be in colonies (often) or solitary, but are mostly built over water.

White-necked Heron Ardea pacifica chicks, near Cunnamulla, southern Queensland.

And while nesting, some herons take on breeding hues, both of feathers and of soft body parts.

Great Egret, Kakadu NP,  with breeding flush to face, and black bill.
When non-breeding (see top photo) face and bill are yellow.

But it was the long filamentous back and head plumes grown during breeding that almost brought them undone, thanks to the brutal whimsies of the fashion industry. Heron feathers have been sought for centuries; Maoris used Great Egret plumes for chieftain’s head-dresses – but they kept captive birds for plucking. The French army used them for colonel’s hats (not from captive birds!). In New Zealand in the 19th century Bitterns were slaughtered by trout fishers for fishing flies. 

Snowy Egret with plumes, Arica, northern Chile

All this however was unimportant relative to the trade in breeding plumes in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They became fashionable for ladies’ hats in Europe and North America; the trade also used gulls, albatrosses, condors, owls, parrots and hummingbirds, but egrets were the favourites. To provide a kilogram of plumes required the death of up to 300 Great Egrets or 1000 Little Egrets – and of course thus their eggs and chicks. 

Great Egret with breeding plumes, Canberra.

From 1899 to 1912, fifteen tonnes of feathers were exported from Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela (ie between 5 and 15 million dead birds). At the height of the industry 10,000 people were employed in the industry in the Paris area alone. One London dealer handled 2 million skins in 1887. By 1877 in New Zealand, only six Great Egret nests were known! In 1903, the price to the hunter in North America was $30 per ounce – twice the value of gold; later it was $80 per ounce. Snares and scatter guns wiped out whole colonies in Burma, Malaysia and Indonesia. It led directly to the formation of the British Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in 1898 and the American Ornithologists’ Union in 1883 and the Audubon Society in 1886; campaigns were intense – two Audubon Society guards were murdered by poachers. 

Intermediate Egret with breeding plumes, only just visible on the back, Canberra.
(Note too the colour of the face and bill, which are both yellow when not breeding.)

In 1910 after intense campaigning the sale of feathers was declared illegal in New York State, and imports to the US were banned in 1913, and to Britain finally in 1920. An illegal trade continued until the whims of fashion finally ended the slaughter in the 1920s. I don’t have evidence of much of an official trade in Australia, though Japanese hunters operated in the north, and through the western Pacific. However, there were certainly raids on colonies in the Riverina, and photographs of starving chicks here were influential in the growing opposition in London.

I don't like dwelling on such dark thoughts, but we can only do things better if we learn from the past - unlikely as that prospect may seem at times. Overall the persecuted heron species have recovered and can readily be appreciated for their intrinsic values now.

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(to complete the heron story)

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Nature in a Warming World

Last week there was great excitement in our part of the world when a pair of Tawny Grassbirds Megalurus timoriensis turned up at Jerrabomberra Wetlands, our prime suburban wetland in a city which is now very well-provided with such habitats.

Tawny Grassbird, Jerrabomberra Wetlands, Canberra; a newcomer moving south.

This is a notable southern and inland extension of their range from that in the field guides, which is normally regarded as coming to just south of Sydney, some 200km from here and on the coast. Individuals of any species can pop up out of range, especially following unusual weather conditions, but I’m not sure that this is the case here. In the last couple of years (but never before that) there have been at least three reports from Melbourne, on the south coast of Victoria some 600km further south again from here; I would expect that this species, if it were expanding its range, would be more likely to follow the coast rather than move inland. Moreover it is unlikely that they only selected Melbourne and Canberra over all the possible non-urban sites in areas between – it is simply that these are places with lots of bird watchers and I am sure that the bird could, and will, be found in many other places where they used not to be. The Tawny Grassbird is a skulker in dense undergrowth, and I expect (with no expertise) that outside of breeding season it is fairly quiet.

No, I am surmising that this is a response to climate change, pushing or encouraging warmer climate birds further south (as is happening in reverse in the Northern Hemisphere). 

Less than 20 years ago the Pacific Koel Eudynamys orientalis, a big dimorphic parasitic cuckoo which overwinters in Indonesia and New Guinea and breeds in northern and eastern Australia, was a very rare phenomenon indeed in Canberra, though the odd one would occasionally overshoot and lob up here for a while. Within the space of a few years it became a more and more common occurrence, until now it is a part of our urban soundscape (one is calling outside as I write). People have almost even given up writing to the paper to complain about its 24 hour a day strident serenade! They now breed here annually. There is no plausible explanation for this other than climate change. 

Pacific Koel; male (above) and female (below).

Another large cuckoo, the Channel-billed Cuckoo Scythrops novaehollandiae, has a very similar distribution and annual movements. It is still rare in the ACT (ie I’ve never seen one here yet! though a couple of weeks ago I heard one fly raucously by outside) but it too is getting commoner each year, and I judge that they will also be breeding here in years to come. 

Channel-billed Cuckoo, Karumba, north Queensland.

White-headed Pigeons Columba leucomela have steadily extended their range south from the mid-south coast of New South Wales well into Victoria in the past decade or so, though there is no doubt that part of their enablement has been the spread of exotic food trees like Camphor Laurel Cinnamomum camphora and Privet Ligustrum spp. However, the Camphor Laurel in particular is probably also being assisted to move south by the warming – nature is infinitely subtle.

White-headed Pigeon, Nowra, New South Wales south coast.

As we well know however birds are not the only organisms known to be moving in response to a warming world. A wide-ranging CSIRO study in 2010, utilising a broad array of published and unpublished data, showed that at least 45 species of south-east Australian marine fish have exhibited “major distributional shifts” which were almost certainly climate-related. Warmer water fish from both further north and west have moved into formerly cooler Tasmanian waters, inevitably displacing local species. 

Nor is it even just animals. In a remarkable study begun in 2003 in the Manu Biosphere Reserve in the Peruvian Andes east of Cusco US ecologists Miles Silman and Ken Freeley banded and measured 14,000 trees of 1,000 species in 14 plots covering 2,400 metres of altitude. After repeat measurements they discovered that an astonishing 85% of tree genera were moving upslope in response to warming at a rate of 2.5 to 3.5 metres per year. Perhaps the most pertinent aspect of this however is that the authors estimate that this rate would need to double for the trees to keep pace with the observed warming. (The link above will take you only to an abstract unless you're a subscriber; see here for an overview.)

Cloud forest, Manu Biosphere Reserve, in the area that Silman and Freeley are monitoring.

Studies of 175 plant species in six French mountain ranges similarly showed that 118 of them – nearly 70% – had moved at least 18.5 metres (ie 60 feet) up the slope per decade over the twentieth century.

And here of course is the rub; once the Tasmanian cool water fish reach the southern limits of that island (these are coastal waters fish, they can’t just swim out to sea), and the Manu trees reach the treeless puna, the high cold treeless mountain steppes, there is nowhere further to go. It is the same dilemma facing Polar Bears in the Arctic and Mountain Pygmy-Possums on the top of the south-east Australian Alps.

But this isn’t the only observed forced reactions of species; there are numerous data sets concerning changes in phenology characters – that is cyclical, especially annual, events such as breeding and migration. As far back as 2003 a wide-ranging review in the prestigious journal Nature revealed “significant mean advancement of spring events” by 2.3 days per decade. Five years later the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report reported that the arrival of spring had been advanced by up to 5.2 days per decade over the past 30 years. Examples cited ranged from first and last appearance of leaves on Gingkos (G. biloba) in Japan, to butterfly emergence in Britain, to bird migration in Australia. 

Gingko leaves, Canberra.

A wide-ranging Australian review, published in 2013, of 89 studies of 347 plant and animal species showed even stronger responses for plants here than in the Northern Hemisphere; the mean rate of advance across all plant responses (leaf set, fruiting, flowering etc) was 11.3 days per decade! Spring migration departure of birds moved forward by 2.2 days per decade (slower than for the Northern Hemisphere, where it was 3.7 days per decade). I mentioned in a recent post how peak flowering of a dominant sub-alpine shrub in the Brindabella Ranges above Canberra has shifted over the 30 years I’ve been taking people up there from about a week into December to late November.

Leafy Bossiaea B. foliosa, Mount Ginini, Namadgi National Park, near Canberra.
Over the past 30 years I have seen the average peak flowering of this pea shrub advance by nearly two weeks.

One of the problems with this is that, naturally enough, each species has a slightly different response to the changes, so that finely-tuned systems are no longer functioning as they evolved to do. Bird chicks are hatching before their key caterpillar food supply does, migratory birds including hummingbirds are arriving before or after the flowers they pollinate are open. In the high alps of south-eastern Australia the already Endangered Mountain Pygmy-Possum Burramys parvus emerges from its hibernation with the snow melt – which is getting earlier each year. Unfortunately the great Bogong Moth migration to the high cool granite crevices of the alps is not getting earlier, which leaves the hungry emerging possums without a key food source.

There are thousands of such phenological studies available, in full or in abstract, or in third-party reports, out there if you’re interested.

In recent times a third general response has been suggested, and demonstrated. While obviously there are always multiple factors acting on the life and evolution of any given organism, we know that in general body size of a given species is likely to be smaller in populations further from the poles – ie in warmer climes. This is known as Bergmann’s Rule and the basis of it is that a smaller object (be it bird, or ball or human baby) has a proportionately greater surface area than a larger one, and thus loses heat faster. We know this for populations of the same species at different latitudes, but what about the same species at the same latitude as climate changes – ie the environment gets steadily warmer? A treasure trove of such data is held in museum specimens throughout the world.

Janet Gardner of the Australian National University, and colleagues, measured 517 museum skins of eight insect-eating birds, collected over 140 years from 1869 to 2001. Six of the species showed a decrease in size since 1950, four of them being statistically significant. The overall impact for those four bird species is that individuals living now at the latitude of Canberra are the size that members of their species were pre-1950 at the latitude of Brisbane (ie 7 degrees of latitude). This I find very striking. Nor is it simply academic - a change in size of even just 4% (as measured in wing lengths by the study) can affect what a bird eats, and thus what it it competing with and must thus further adapt to.

Birds that are getting smaller as temperatures rise.
Brown Treecreeper Climacteris picumnus, Canberra (above);
White-browed Babbler Pomatostomus superciliosus Shark Bay, Western Australia (below).

Nature, as I have observed before, is never as straightforward as our little brains might like. More recently apparently conflicting results from those of Gardner’s team were obtained from south-west Western Australia for wing-lengths of Ringneck Parrots Barnardius zonarius (‘Twenty-eights’, for their call, as the sub-species is known over there), which had increased by 4-5mm over the past 45 years. Tellingly, birds from further north in the state, and from the Western Australian eastern deserts, where temperatures haven’t risen as much, show no such increase. The change is as significant as those of Gardner’s were, but in the opposite direction. There is no reason to suppose however that all species in all situations will respond identically to similar situations, and the author suggests that the parrots might be growing longer wings to assist in heat dispersal, in accord with Allen’s Rule.  

Twenty-eight Parrot, Cervantes, Western Australia.
Longer wings to stay cool?

Only ten years ago such responses to climate change were only guessed at, and there will be more surprises to come. One such, which has no obvious explanation for now, is the case of the Eurasian Scops Owl Otus scops, which comes in two colour forms, dark-reddish and pale-reddish (and intermediates). Italian museum studies showed that the proportion of dark-red forms increased significantly over the last century. Some of that was due to unknown causes (perhaps an increase in Italian forests over that time, where being darker could be advantageous, suggest the authors) but the rest is apparently down to climate change. At this stage the best explanation is that the gene for dark-red is linked to one that confers an advantage in a warmer world, but so far we can only speculate.

Eurasian Scops Owl, pale-reddish and dark-reddish forms.
Illustration taken from Handbook of the Birds of the World, which refers to them as
grey-brown and rufous-brown morphs.

I am no more interested in arguing about the reality of climate change than I am in debating whether gravity exists or if the sky is blue. It does occur to me though that it would be interesting to hear from someone who has chosen to believe in a fabulous world-wide conspiracy of thousands of scientists, to explain how thousands of species of plants and animals were also persuaded to participate in the deception.

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(today I posted a day early, as I'll be away tomorrow)

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