Bonding with the cousins. (1 Viewer)

Over the last few months I have noticed an interesting aspect of vagrant behaviour, that of teeming up with the 'nearest reletives' in the new host country.

While in the Scillies this year I saw two cases of the phenomenon in quick succession.
A Rose Coloured starling in a flock of starlings. While on the ground the 'natives' seemed to be ignoring the 'immigrant' and when they all flew together, they tended to ejoy 'mobbing' it a bit in the air. A avian form of racila discrimination.

Half an hour later there was an American Golden Plover on the shore in the company of 5 native plovers. This one seemed perfectly accepted and when they flew it's narrower wings were obvious.

Recently in Cornwall a couple of us saw a Green-winged Teal with a flock of (ordinary) Teal, all being freaked out by a Peregrine that kept swooping over head . Closeby there was an American Wigeon, again in the company of 'European' Wigeons.

How do they find each other?

At Bowling Green Marsh near Exeter we've had a Glossy Ibis resident since September 2002. This year it was joined by another Glossy in October and the two are sometimes seen together.
Do they not know that they are three star rarities in this country and that the chances of one coming upon another by chance must be... well, if not winning lottery ticket proportions, certainly pretty unlikely.
How the hell did they do that? Some built-in sonar device?

Migration and the vagaries of migration never cease to fascinate.

Sin a bhfuil.

Padraig. :frog:

I guess its down to the birds knowing (and being able to find) the habitat they like. There must be something about the Hayle Estuary that Wigeon and Teal find just right. Their American cousins are similar enough to like the same conditions and (assuming they both came direct from the west - a hell of an assumption, admittedly) the Hayle is the first conducive place they would hit. Having once teamed up with those flocks they would then migrate with them and there's a very good chance that they would return the following winter. As you've probably guessed, I don't think either of the American ducks at Hayle is a newly-arrived bird. There have been records of both birds there for a few winters now.

It's worth remembering that you only have to get a few hundred feet up in the air and you can see a hell of a distance.

Quite what makes a conducive habitat for any particular bird, though, is beyond my ken. A good example is House Martins. They'll happily nest under the eaves of one house while ignoring what to us seems an identical house next door to it.

Jason

Bluetail said:

Quite what makes a conducive habitat for any particular bird, though, is beyond my ken. A good example is House Martins. They'll happily nest under the eaves of one house while ignoring what to us seems an identical house next door to it.

Jason

Click to expand...

I just thought they knew who would get most annoyed by thousand of random bits of mud stuck to their nice white-washed houses!

Uh? I thought they knew who would get annoyed by them not nesting on their houses!

They understand both you will find!

Like Bluetail has mentioned once here they stick with their cousins and go with them to their summering grounds and return for the winter. I think the same happens with some rare geese, maybe the Red-breasted Goose at Martin Mere?

Your conducive habitat' hypothesis has good explanatory power Bluetail.

Not hard to imagine that from 5,000 ft up on a clear winter's moonlit night, the contours of an estuary such as Hayle might appear lit up like the spotlit runway of an airfield does to a jet pilot.

Once landed an American Wigeon, lets say, might find the arrival lounge full of its European cousins, all tucking into delicious hydrobia, or whatever and the bonding is complete.

I still need convincing though on the Glossy Ibis winging its way over the English Channel and managing to touch down next to 'Izzie' (did anyone get a consensus going on what it should be called-Izzie sounds androgynous enough to apply to either sex so I like it).

In more anthromorphic moments ( I have a few of those) I fancied that the Ibises like Bowling Green Marsh because they know its probably got the best constructed hide in the southwest and that, because they know that will help draw a crowd, they are exhibitionists at heart.

But then I remember that BGM is extremely hard for non-familiars to find (stories of eager twitchers down for the weekend from Macclesfield or wherever asking the native Topshamites in their best Northern drawl the way to BGM (I can't imitate the accent on compter) only to be told 'haven't got a cluemate-never heard of it' ; all of which makes me think that there may be some more scientific reason why they both chose Topsham and also how they both managed to find it.
Just that I cannot think of one right now.

Any guesses?

Regards,

Padraig

I don't really know anything about the habits of ibises, but I imagine it went something lke this:

1) Bird crosses English Channel.

2) Bird sees estuary from afar and thinks, "Yum!"

3) Bird pitches and feeds, but eventually gets pushed off by the high tide.

4) Bird follows the lead set by the other waders and pitches down at the roost site on BGM

5) Bird teams up with Izzy on the (correct) assumption that Izzy already has the best feeding places sussed.

Jason

Yes Jason,

Much more prosaic than my ranting hypotheses but I guess that that's probably how it happened. Having bumped into another of its species, it probably decide to stay rather than carry up the coast to, say, Tamar estuary where no doubt you would have got the first twitch on it.

Cheers for that

P. B