Hi, everyone.  This week’s bird is the gray-crowned babbler.  This bird is fairly widespread in Australia, with a smaller population on the southern coast of New Guinea, straddling the border between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.  It is the largest of Australia’s four babbler species, although info about this bird is a bit fragmented and I couldn’t find out how big it actually is.  It comes in a couple of flavors, with the gray variety, named temporalis temporalis living primarily in “Victoria, eastern Queensland, New South Wales and south-eastern South Australia.”  The rufous-breasted example, called temporalis rubeculus, lives in “Australia within the states of Western Australia, Northern Territory, western Queensland and a small area of northern South Australia.”  Occasionally birds of these subspecies will wander out of their traditional territories, and are in those cases referred to as vagrants.  The idea of a bird with a bindle on a stick, maybe a top hat that has seen better days, is pretty delightful.

The babbler prefers open forests with a layer of shrub ground cover.  It primarily eats insects and an occasional seed, foraging and living in groups of four to 15 individuals.  Like a lot of species we have learned about, these groups are made up of breeding pairs and young adult “helpers” who contribute to nest building, foraging, and otherwise caring for juveniles.  They build two kinds of nests, roost nests, used by the group year round, and brood nests for the breeding females to raise young in.  Roost nests are large and dome-shaped, and most often placed in forks in trees 4-7m (13-22 ft) off the ground.  My absolute favorite fact about this week’s bird is that these larger nest  are built to have a “roof and landing platform” above the entrance tunnel to the nest, and the nest is often lined with grass, wool and feathers.  Our new friend is into pretty elaborate interior design.  

There appears to be some disagreement on if this bird is threatened, which I suppose beats everyone agreeing that it is in trouble.  The Australian government and the UN agree that it is not threatened, while some local governments in Australians states it calls home list it as threatened or vulnerable.  The greatest threat facing the gray crowned babbler is ecosystem fragmentation as land on which it lives is impacted by human activities.  

Oh, right, to go out on a lighter note, this bird is also referred to as the gray-crowned chatterer, the happy-jack, the dog-bird and the barking bird.  Have a good weekend, everyone!

Links: https://tinyurl.com/2pypuhws, https://tinyurl.com/yar72wbn, https://tinyurl.com/ye3hampt, https://tinyurl.com/2fyt8z5b