Hi, friends.  I hope you are all doing well, despite it all.  This week’s bird was suggested by my dad, so I figured we would take a break from my list of South American birds.  

The purple-crowned fairywren is a tiny bird native to northern Australia, although it is somehow also the largest member of its genus, Malurus.  It shares the grouping with 11 other very striking species of wrens, which I will cover in future installments should I remember.  Fairywrens are fairly monogamous, and a breeding pair will stay together for years.  Studies show that if members of the pair are closely related, the female will often seek out other partners as well to stave off inbreeding issues.  Like at least one other bird we covered, they are “cooperative breeders.”  This means that the children of a pair will stick around for years and help raise and care for chicks before striking out on their own.  Within these groups, only the dominant, older pair will breed.  Once they decide to leave, males tend to stay closer by to where they were fledged, females venture further afield, possibly in an effort to end up with someone who isn’t an unacceptably close relative.   This bird goes by a variety of fun names, which most often incorporate mention of males’ striking color, including crowned superb warbler, lilac-crowned fairywren, lilac-crowned wren, mauve-crowned wren, purple-crowned warbler, purple-crowned wren, and purple-crowned wren-warbler.

The birds live exclusively alongside riverbanks, and when they leave their family group will find a new 50-300m meter area near the water to call their own.  On this note, there are two subspecies which are separated by impassible terrain to the birds, I believe it is several hundred kilometers of land that is too dry for them to travel through.  These birds are particularly vulnerable to encroachment by humans into there territory, and for a reason new to our bird survey.  Because purple-crowned fairywrens feed almost exclusively on insects, the introduction of larger animals which will tread on the grass next to riverbanks looking to drink significantly negatively impact the local habitat for insects.  If there is no tall grass for bugs to hide in, there are no bugs to eat.  They are also vulnerable to wildfires (like most living things) and climate change/erosion of riparian ecosystems due to logging.  The birds are rated as “of least concern” by the IUCN, but protected by the Australian government.  

The birds are sexually dimorphic, and their namesake purple crown appears on the heads of males during the mating season, which follows the first big rain of the year in spring.  

I’m sorry this column is so brief this week, but it is almost 10pm as I am writing, and its time for it to be the weekend already.  I hope the pictures of this striking bird make up for it, and please check out my “links” section for more info if so inclined.  I usually write as much of this as possible during the week at work, but its been really picking up and I might need to find time for this hobby while actually off the clock, which seems like a bummer.  Have a good weekend, everyone.

Links: https://ebird.org/species/pucfai2, https://tinyurl.com/kszby67w, https://tinyurl.com/4d4ewz48, https://tinyurl.com/4pxknpar, https://tinyurl.com/4h5sxfpp Australian Wildlife Conservancy: https://tinyurl.com/yu7cufbn