Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"

Today we're back in the present, looking at a fine birdie! This is the Southern Pied Babbler, Turdoides bicolor. The scientific name means 'Two-coloured Thrush-like Thingy'. This, like many other species, has gone through a recent process of reclassification. Still called a babbler, it used to belong to the family called the Babbler Family, the Timaliidae. Now this family has been broken up; today, when you speak of a 'babbler' you can no longer assign it to a specific family. Our babbler of the day has landed in the Leiotrichidae, the Laughing-Thrush family. As hinted by the common name as well as this species' genus name, these are rather thrush-like birds in size and shape, but many of whom have distinctive loud, mocking calls. Several Asian species are quite brightly coloured and/or boldly patterned, while the African ones are somewhat more drab. Our babblers are called 'katlagters' in Afrikaans – that means 'cat-laughers'. My garden babblers indeed appear to like calling mockingly at my cat!

Then there's the reason why this is called the southern pied babbler. There has to be a northern one too, right? Indeed, the Northern Pied Babbler, Turdoides hypoleuca ('Thrush-like Thingy that's White Below') occurs over a small range in Tanzania and Kenya, and looks somewhat different, being dark brown above and white below, while as you can see, the southern species is mainly white with black wings and tail, sexes looking the same. It is perhaps the most striking of the African babblers. It occurs in dry regions in Southern Africa, from northern South Africa into Namibia, Botswana and southern Zimbabwe. Apart from these two, seventeen other babbler species in the same genus occur all across Africa and parts of Asia. The Arrowmarked Babbler is a close relative. Several Asian species that used to belong to the genus, have been removed and put in their own genus, Argyra.

Pied babblers are similar in behaviour to arrowmarked babblers. They are very cooperative. They typically live in noisy groups of (rarely) two to 16 bird foraging through open, dry, thorny woodland. They are particularly associated with Camelthorn trees, Vachellia erioloba. Each group defends its own territory. Their calls are a harsh, high-pitched, husky jeering, typically uttered by several birds in unison. They forage mainly on the ground, often thrashing dry leaves aside to uncover their prey, or even digging into the soil for it, with their strong, curved bills. They feed mostly on invertebrates and small reptiles. They can target intimidating critters such as scorpions, centipedes and solifuges (also called sun or camel spiders, though they're not true spiders).

There's an interesting relationship between pied babblers and Forktailed Drongos. The drongos, bold and aggressive birds, often associate with flocks of babblers. The drongos are very alert and will give warning calls the babblers heed, if they spot any danger. They thereby serve as sentinels, allowing the babblers to be a bit more at ease while feeding. However, every now and then, the drongos will sound false alarms! Upon hearing this, the babblers will scatter for safety and shelter, abandoning prey that they were targeting – which the drongos will then swoop at and take for themselves! But this doesn't always work, since in larger groups, there will be enough babblers to perform sentinel duties themselves, in which case they chase away the drongos. The drongos are tolerated more in small babbler groups. They tend to steal food more from inexperienced immature babblers than from adults.

A more benign interaction is with Scimitarbills, black birds with curved bills that are related to Hoopoes and Wood-hoopoes. These hang around close to babbler flocks, listening out for the babbler's own sentinels giving alarm calls, enabling the scimitarbills also to avoid predators.

It's mainly in their breeding activity that the babblers cooperate most interestingly. Each group will have a dominant couple, who will do basically all of the breeding for the flock. The other flock members will assist the dominant couple in raising the chicks. They will help incubate the eggs, bring food to the nestlings, and protect them from cold, hot or rainy weather by sheltering them with their bodies.

The nestlings are 'taught' by older birds to know when there's food for them. This is done by the older birds uttering a purring call on approaching the nest. The nestlings soon learn that this means food, and they'll reach out of the nest, to receive their meal. But the adult babblers now use the purring call in an ingenious way to manipulate the youngsters. When it is time for the nestlings to fledge, the adults will utter the purring call a distance away from the nest; still associating the call with food, the nestlings will now be tempted to leave the nest. They may even be forced to leave the nest by aggressive behaviour from their parents (who at this point may want to start a new clutch), such as jumping on them! From here, the helpers will be the ones raising them. Then, they can continue to be taught, the adults using the purring call to coax the young birds to safety, or to feeding sites with lots of food. So the young birds learn to forage for themselves. They tend to be rather slow learners, and adults may continue feeding them for up to four months after they leave the nest. The birds that receive most attention and food for the longest time from the adult helpers, turn out the biggest, strongest and healthiest. The young birds are taught along the way how to become helpers themselves, for when it becomes their turn to assist with raising a new brood. Some birds may leave their birth flocks and disperse to join others. Dispersal helps to avoid inbreeding, enabling couples to form from birds that aren't direct relatives. This helps against inbreeding, which can cause genetic deterioration.

Because of their cooperative breeding efforts, pied babblers are quite successful breeders. They can raise three clutches per season, that is to say over the spring and summer, the rainy season. The wetter the season, the more successful the breeding attempt is likely to be. Each clutch on average has three eggs. But remember that in each group, it is typically only the dominant couple that breeds. But because of their helpers, they 'waste' fewer eggs per breeding attempt, and the parents can start a new brood before the previous chicks have become independent. They are sometimes parasitized by Levaillant's Cuckoos; strangely, some babblers seem to be savvy to the cuckoo chicks and reject them, while others blithely accept them.

All of this help, care and attention make for strong babbler 'societies'. Each flock tends to stay close together, birds rarely straying more than 20 m from their cohorts. They all perform sentinel duty, mob predators, and in general defend their territories. Birds are very involved with each other. They preen each other, engage in play-fighting (mostly the youngsters, but adults too), roost and huddle together, warming each other in the cold nights. The play-fighting usually takes the form of birds 'wrestling' with each other on the ground, chasing each other, jumping on each other, or hanging upside-down. Their calls help keep their groups together, proclaim their territories, inform each other of aspects like food, danger, or individual birds that are in distress. When they meet neighboring groups, the birds become quite agitated and display to each other by calling loudly while spreading their tails and drooping their wings. Relationships within the group is dynamic. Dominants may be usurped, parents may 'divorce', young birds may be kidnapped or even killed. Overall, though, groups tend to remain stable. In the wild, pied babblers can live for 15 years.

Much of the information I present here, comes from the amazing (ongoing) research by Dr. Amanda Ridley. She and her collaborators are studying several groups of pied babblers in the southern Kalahari Desert region. They've habituated these birds to themselves – the birds come to them now without fear. They even jump onto scales of their own accord, to be weighed! The birds are individually identified by personalized coloured rings on their legs. Her research mostly revolves around the cooperative breeding behaviour of these fascinating birds.

Though not common, pied babblers are widespread and relatively safe. They are, though, vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In their already very hot, dry haunts, they can be deleteriously affected if global warming should raise the temperatures even higher. It has been shown that youngsters learn more slowly, the hotter it gets!

Willem

26.02.24 Front Page

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