Howdy, friends.  This week we are continuing our barbet-related journey by covering a bird that came up last week.  The red-vented bulbul is not a barbet, but it does steal berries which coppersmith barbets will collect for their mates while the mate is brooding over eggs.  Like our subject last week, the red-vented bulbul is native to the Indian subcontinent, but unlike the coppersmith barbet, it is exceptionally adaptable and considered an invasive species.  It has “established itself” in Fiji, Argentina, Tonga, Samoa, the Cook Islands and parts of the US.  In my research I came across them mostly in Hawaii, so it looks like they seem to have a Pacific island thing going on.  It was the subject of a successful eradication campaign in New Zealand in 1955, although it is still sometimes reported there.  One of the websites I used as a source for the header this week was something about “birds of Saudi Arabia,” so our tenacious little friend really gets around.  

Red-vented bulbuls feed on a variety of things, including fruits, petals of flowers, bugs and small lizards, specifically the house gecko, a lizard which shares a lot of native and introduced range with the bulbul.  It is because of their propensity to eat fruit that they are considered pests.  Some countries have tried to use pesticide to dissuade the birds, but the bulbul is too clever for this and often learns to avoid the poison.  They are important pollinators and dispersers of seeds in their native ecosystem, but by the same token can disperse the seeds of invasive plants in areas where the birds themselves do not belong.  Some researchers have found that the bulbul will out-compete and push out local species, but not other introduced animals.  Birds of an invasive feather, apparently.  

The red-vented bulbul prefers scrubland, open plains and cultivated land, probably because it is down to eat so many things humans are likely to cultivate.  Male and female birds look the same, juvenile birds have duller plumage.  The red-vented bulbul is really in it to win it with nest building, it has been observed nesting in mudbanks, constructing nests on floating mats of water hyacinth leaves, inside actively occupied human dwellings and in at least one case, inside an actively used bus.  Both parents work to raise the young and for reasons I was not able to divine, swallow the young’s droppings early on while the young have few gut bacteria.  Later they take the droppings and dispose of them elsewhere outside the nest.  One would guess they are trying to keep the nest free of bacteria, which is an interesting contrast to another recent bird we covered, which coated the entrance to its nest with its leavings, I believe as a microbial defense against other things it didn’t want getting in.  Nature is as gross as it is fascinating.  

Finally, red-vented bulbuls were found to be one of the first creatures aside from humans that cannot synthesize their own vitamin C, although many birds have since been found that also cannot.  

As an aside, per the repeated warnings about Mayor McSquirrel this week, I think its pretty neat that we are a big deal over at Disqus because (I must assume) we’re a self-moderating community that generates a mountain of original content.  Thanks, mods, thanks all you PT heads, for making this such a great place to be.  Please continue to not threaten Mayor McSquirrel, be good to each other and yourselves.  Also, party on as the situation may warrant.  

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