This week’s bird is the tawny frogmouth, which was suggested by a friend from work.  The frogmouth is native to most of Australia and Tasmania and is very adaptable to a wide range of circumstances and biomes.  This broad habitat includes areas where temperatures during the day are as high as 30C (86F) and as low as 0C (32F).  It has dense feathers that protect it from the cold, and will sit in the sun throughout a cold day.  It will turn its head side to side to make sure the sun gets in under its feathers.  It will also go into torpor regularly, drastically cutting its metabolism in a process similar to hibernation.  Torpor is different in that it doesn’t last as long, so called “shallow torpor” may last for several hours and the bird will enter this state every day while food is scarce.  In hot weather, it will breath up to three times faster with its beak closed, maintaining camouflage.  If the temperature continues to increase it will pant with its beak open and secrete a mucus which cools down incoming air and therefore the bird.  

Frogmouths mate for life and enjoy spending a bunch of time squished up against each other, which is pretty cute.  This is part of their mating ritual, and is also a survival strategy.  The frogmouth spends most of the day motionless perched on a tree branch.  It doesn’t just rely on its really impressive, tree-looking camouflage, it will also position itself on a branch so that it looks like a broken bit of wood and will assume a specific position to look like more broken branch.  Although frogmouths look like owls, they are not.  They have similar plumage and nocturnal habits, but they are primarily insectivorous, and so lack the owl’s strong talons and narrow, downward pointed beak.  Instead, their feet are just designed for gripping a tree branch all day, and their broad, shallow beaks are designed to catch insects.  They also have eyes on the side of their heads, like most birds, unlike owls who have front facing eyes to provide excellent depth perception.  

Frogmouths are considered very effective natural pest control, since they eat lots of small insects as well as the occasional small vertebrate that are considered pests by humans.  As a result, they are fairly well adapted to living around people.  Although they are not currently considered threatened, they face pressure from habitat loss and pesticides that bioaccumulate in the bird or things it is likely to eat.  They hunt mostly at dusk or at night, and pounce on their pray from the low branches where they most often wait out daylight hours.  Because their “looking like a branch” sometimes pose involves an open beak, they will briefly close it to eat a bug that wandered too close, breaking their tree branch illusion for a moment.

Tawny frogmouth nests are fragile piles of leaves assembled in the forks of trees.  Due to the scientifically established crappiness of their nests, they will sometimes take over the nest of other birds. Once the eggs are laid, the male will sit on them during the day, but regardless of whose turn it is to brood, the other partner will stay close by and make sure the one sitting on the eggs has enough to eat.  Once a pair of birds has chosen a territory, they will stay in it for a decade or more, essentially their entire adult lives. 

Finally, if you are the person who posted the kick ass image below, please let me know, I want to give proper credit.

Links: https://tinyurl.com/39ddk8hu, https://tinyurl.com/2rj3c4vh, https://tinyurl.com/3w8bdc4t, https://tinyurl.com/2sa3zpfb,  https://tinyurl.com/9ta24yn3