Hi, everyone.  This week’s bird is the red-eared firetail.  This bird is a small, seed-eating finch that lives exclusively in the southwest corner of Australia.  The firetail tends to live in dense undergrowth near rivers, and in gullies and heaths.  It is very good at moving quickly and quietly through its environment, and is rarely seen or heard by humans.  It prefers not to touch the ground, and will stick to lower branches where possible.  The firetail will collect seeds with its beak, but where necessary will use its feet to guide the top of a blade of grass into range to grab the seeds.  As someone who is a fan of picking laundry off the floor with my toes rather than bend over, I feel you, bird.  

Red-eared firetails pair for life, and tend to stick to family units in most cases.  Their territory is around 100-200 meters around their nesting site, and they will only defend territory immediately adjacent, so the boundaries between various territories are porous and can overlap.  Despite this groovy attitude toward intruders, firetails will fight and drive out their own offspring when it is time to leave.  

The firetail is not considered threatened, although in my brief research, the reasons for this are not great.  First, it is hard to find.  It likes to hide and is very good at doing so, so it is hard to get a good count on how many exist.  Second, while its habitat has been negatively impacted by deforestation, it appears that our fluffy friend is good at moving to new areas which meet its criteria.  A solution for now, perhaps, but not a permanent one.  Then again, Australia is mind-bogglingly enormous and its proportionally tiny range encompasses as much as 50,000 square kilometers.  

I found the mating/nesting display of this species particularly interesting, there appears to be symbolism and everything.  Please enjoy this excerpt I couldn’t be bothered to paraphrase:

“The male selects a nesting site and presents an overt display—presumably to entice a female—of an inflated pose and issues a rendition of its identity call, interspersed with hopping movements about the branches. The male may continue these gestures for up to 45 minutes, perhaps utilising a length of grass (200–450 mm) that appears to be pierced but is actually held at the point of the bill by a fibre pulled from the base of the stalk. The grass prop—symbolic of nest construction and copulation according to the ethological interpretation of Immelmann—is dangled downward as the male presents the prospective site. The stem can be lost in high wind as it sways beneath the bill. While moving around the site, if the stem is snagged by the undergrowth, the male gives a quick sideways tug of its head. If the gestures fail to solicit the interest of a female the suitor either selects another site or another stem of grass before resuming his efforts. The male abandons his performance when a female responds by investigating the display area, and retires to the precise location he has proposed; at this position, usually a discreet fork in the branches, he drops his grass stem prop and utters his nest site call. If persuaded, the female moves near or onto the position indicated by the male; if dissatisfied she departs to await the next site proposal.”

I love the idea that the male does his dance with a blade of grass, so as to communicate mating as well as nest building, and that the grass used in a successful dance is then used to mark the site where the couple will build their nest. 

That’s it for me this week, have a good weekend, everyone!