17 September 2024: Day 11, WINGS Spain in Autumn. At the plains east of Seville, then our excursion concludes at midday in Seville. Click on right here to peer (normally) the place I’m lately. NOTE: This newsletter was once written in August.
These days is our remaining birding day in Spain and I’ve already noticed 4 hoopoes.
Totally unmistakable orange hen with zebra-striped wings, a Chinese language fan of a crest (most often held closed, however continuously raised simply after touchdown), and a rapier of a invoice. Favors semiopen habitats reminiscent of heathland, farmland, orchards, grassy lawns, the place it feeds at the flooring, probing with its lengthy invoice for bugs
Hoopoes are massive in my creativeness — possibly as a result of their crests — however they’re simplest the scale of American robins even though their form may be very other. This video of captive hoopoes in Dubai presentations their measurement relative to a human hand.
Hoopoes have been named for his or her music …
… and are so crowd pleasing that people have each respected and feared them. Hoopoes have been sacred in Historical Egypt and a logo of distinctive feature in Persia but harbingers of battle in Scandanavia and foreshadowers of dying in Estonia. Used to be it the hoopoe’s conduct that brought about those evaluations?
Hoopoes nest in cavities the place the feminine lays 2-12 eggs that hatch 24 hours aside within the order they have been laid. The nestlings can subsequently vary in age from 1 to twelve+ days previous however the youngest don’t remaining lengthy.
Early caution, other people. Some ugly information forward.
A March record at Science.org describes how researchers in Granada Province noticed a ugly conduct in hoopoe households this is rather peculiar amongst birds.
Within the first of 2 research, Juan José Soler on the Experimental Station of Arid Zones in Spain confirmed that “hoopoe moms steadily feed more youthful chicks to older chicks. And he suspected that hoopoe moms laid further eggs with the purpose of the use of the hatchlings as meals.”
The second one find out about bore this out. In settings the place meals was once ample all through egg laying feminine hoopoes laid extra eggs and later used the youngest chicks as meals for the older ones. Curiously, nests with prime cannibalism fledged extra chicks that the ones with out.
Past the strangeness (dare I say horror?) of cannibalism introduced through one’s mom is the truth that hoopoes wouldn’t have beaks and claws supplied to kill small birds. “That may well be why, says Soler, mom hoopoes continuously grasp the unfortunate chick and shove it into the mouth of an older chick, which swallows it complete.” — Science.org.: Watch Out! This colourful hen raises a nest of cannibals.
This conduct might sound acquainted to these of you who bear in mind the Pitt peregrine mom nicknamed Hope, 2016-2019. Each spring Hope killed and ate one or two of her chicks and introduced them as meals to the older chicks. Now that I do know of the hoopoe’s peculiar conduct, possibly Hope must were named Hoopoe.
Learn extra in regards to the research at Science.org.: Watch Out! This colourful hen raises a nest of cannibals.
p.s. In spite of the strangeness I nonetheless like hoopoes.