17 September 2024: Day 11, WINGS Spain in Autumn. On the plains east of Seville, then our tour concludes at midday in Seville. Click on right here to see (usually) the place I’m right this moment. NOTE: This text was written in August.
In the present day is our final birding day in Spain and I’ve already seen 4 hoopoes.
Totally unmistakable orange chook with zebra-striped wings, a Chinese language fan of a crest (normally held closed, however typically raised simply after touchdown), and a rapier of a invoice. Favors semiopen habitats similar to heathland, farmland, orchards, grassy lawns, the place it feeds on the bottom, probing with its lengthy invoice for bugs
Hoopoes are giant in my creativeness — maybe due to their crests — however they’re solely the scale of American robins although their form may be very completely different. This video of captive hoopoes in Dubai reveals their dimension relative to a human hand.
Hoopoes have been named for his or her tune …
… and are so eye-catching that people have each revered and feared them. Hoopoes have been sacred in Historical Egypt and a logo of advantage in Persia but harbingers of struggle in Scandanavia and foreshadowers of demise in Estonia. Was it the hoopoe’s habits that prompted these opinions?
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 12+ days previous however the youngest don’t final lengthy.
Early warning, of us. Some ugly information forward.
A March report at Science.org describes how researchers in Granada Province noticed a ugly habits in hoopoe households that’s fairly uncommon amongst birds.
Within the first of two research, Juan José Soler on the Experimental Station of Arid Zones in Spain confirmed that “hoopoe moms continuously feed youthful chicks to older chicks. And he suspected that hoopoe moms laid further eggs with the intention of utilizing the hatchlings as meals.”
The second research bore this out. In settings the place meals was plentiful throughout egg laying feminine hoopoes laid extra eggs and later used the youngest chicks as meals for the older ones. Apparently, nests with excessive cannibalism fledged extra chicks that these with out.
Past the strangeness (dare I say horror?) of cannibalism supplied by one’s mom is the truth that hoopoes do not need beaks and claws outfitted to kill small birds. “That is likely to be why, says Soler, mom hoopoes typically seize the unfortunate chick and shove it into the mouth of an older chick, which swallows it entire.” — Science.org.: Watch Out! This colourful chook raises a nest of cannibals.
This habits could 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 supplied them as meals to the older chicks. Now that I do know of the hoopoe’s uncommon habits, maybe Hope ought to have been named Hoopoe.
Learn extra in regards to the research at Science.org.: Watch Out! This colourful chook raises a nest of cannibals.
p.s. Regardless of the strangeness I nonetheless like hoopoes.
