I WAS recently sent via email a series of photographs involving a pair of swallows, probably taken in France and therefore most likely barn or European swallows.
The pictures show a hen robin that has been hit by a passing car as she was making a low swoop over the road and the cock bird in some distress right next to her. The pictures show the cock trying to feed her (she is still alive at this stage), trying to ‘revive’ her (note the ‘mating’ comment shortly), and finally standing beside the body crying out apparently in sorrow.
A great series of pictures, but how accurate is the commentary, isn’t it all just very anthropomorphic? I sent the series to bird fundi, Andy Ruffle of Birdlife Trogons, and asked for his opinion. He said, ‘Nice set of pics and ‘sweet’ story, but it’s difficult to say what is really going on. The feeding of the mate in pic two is common pair bonding behaviour. The third pic does look as though the male is trying to mate with the female. Unfortunately, we do tend to associate the behaviour of animals with what is familiar to us. Only the swallow will know what really went on’.
Thanks, Andy, but we have experienced what can best be described as grieving behaviour several times with Cape wagtails in our garden in Johannesburg. Parent birds would lose a youngster, for example, and the pair of them would sit or walk around the garden for days obviously calling out to the missing family member. As Andy says, however, we’ll never really know.
Wagtails really are the most delightful birds and were our constant companions in Jo’burg. They would march around the stoep while we ate lunch, literally waiting for crumbs, and they would also march into the kitchen at times while we were busy in there. Another birdy story comes from a reader in Margate who wants to know where the weavers go for the winter.
As far as I can gather they don’t go anywhere. According to Newman’s, some of them are nomadic when not breeding, which may account for their temporary disappearance from Margate. The nomadic ones include the spotted back or village weaver, which we definitely have down here.
The reader described her weavers as ‘little vultures’ because of their voracious appetites at her bird table. Well, you should go to the new vulture hide at Oribi – when we were there we saw a single Cape wagtail perched proudly on a large and very dead cow. He obviously had a voracious appetite too.**
Finally, the other day we saw a pair of crowned cranes at the uMhlangeni River that runs into the sea at St Michael’s. A wonderful sighting as these cranes are not often seen down on the coast, in fact the last, and indeed the first, pair we saw was in the cane fields around Trafalgar.
* Newman’s Birds of Southern Africa, revised by Vanessa Newman, Struik, Cape Town, 2010.
** To visit the vulture hide contact Andy Ruffle, 039 6950829.
