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Butcherbirds win out in the turf wars

June 18, 2022 Don Knowler

The turf wars have returned to my garden with the onslaught of winter. The ravens and currawongs are once again engaged in battle over the scraps of food I leave out for them each morning.
And this year another protagonist has joined the fray – a grey butcherbird.
The resident forest ravens have the garden to themselves before the raiders arrive at about the time of the official start of winter on June 1.
Grey currawongs might be seen all year but their numbers start to build in the winter months. All the same, they continue to show the ravens a little respect, probably on account of the currawongs’ slightly smaller size and less dagger-shaped beak.
The ravens still have the first pick of the scattering of pieces of cheese or leftover meat scraps from the meal of the previous evening.
There’s always plenty to go around and plenty to share until the arrival of another currawong species, black currawongs, who move into the suburbs from the high country as the first snows settle on kunanyi/ Mt Wellington.
The relatively peaceful coexistence is shattered by the more aggressive black currawongs, who hunt in large flocks and outnumber the ravens and the smaller parties of grey currawongs.
Although there’s no denying the three species are wily and smart in their manoeuvres and machinations to snare food, the butcherbird has managed to outsmart them all.
The male butcherbird perches in an outsized bottlebrush to watch me through the kitchen window and has worked out precisely at what moment I’m about to toss the food on to the lawn. During the brief stand-off between the ravens and currawongs, the butcherbird swoops without touching the ground, grabs the snack and is off before the bigger, less agile birds have even noticed.
Compared with the uniform black plumage of the other three, the butcherbird brings a subtlety of colour to the garden, even if it presents not “colour” but nuance in many shades of grey, mixed with charcoal-black and washing-powder white.
Although the grey butcherbird is easy to identify, its close relatives, the currawongs, present a challenge but seen together at this time of year the two species can be separated. The grey currawong is actually black in its Tasmanian form and has more prominent white markings, namely on its lower body under the tail and white “windows” or patches in its wings. The endemic black currawong, or mountain jay, shows white feathers only at the tips of its wings and tail.
Song also separates them: the grey currawong makes a “clinking” sound, giving it an alternative name of “clinking currawong”, while the mountain jay has a trumpet-like song.
The latter’s call is the signature tune of the mountains in summer but in winter it becomes a menacing war cry in the garden when the black currawongs take on all-comers.

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