Living the family life – the White-browed Babbler

One of the most enjoyable aspects of watching birds is taking note of their behaviour and getting to know the way they interact with their habitat and other birds. Like people, most birds are generally quite social creatures; however, like people, some birds have better social skills than others. Few species of birds are as social and gregarious as babblers. In the North East, there are two species of these boisterous and comical birds – the endangered Grey-crowned Babbler, which occurs in grassy box eucalypt woodlands; and the more common and familiar White-browed Babbler, which typically inhabits denser and shrubbier bushland areas. At around 20 cm in length, White-browed Babblers are considerably smaller than their Grey-crowned cousins, and are identified by their dusky dark brown plumage on their wings and back, their crisp white throat and chest, and a narrow white eye-brow which is rather conspicuous against their chocolate brown crown and head. When flushed off the ground or when in flight, their dark brown-black tails tipped broadly with white are very obvious. The other noticeable feature of these birds is their long thin down-curved bill. White-browed Babblers occur in family groups of up to a dozen or so birds. These highly-animated and social birds keep close company and maintain constant communication with each other. They are almost never solitary, performing all activities together as a family, including foraging, preening, dust-bathing, and roosting. Unlike most other birds, babblers build nests throughout the year which they use as ‘dormitories’ for night-time roosting. The entire family group can squeeze into these football-sized dome-shaped structures composed of twigs and lined with dry grass and feathers. During spring, members of the family group build a separate nest for breeding, and although the dominant male and female form the breeding pair, the remainder of the family assist with all other domestic duties such as defending their territory, keeping watch for predators, nest maintenance, and feeding the new chicks once they hatch in the nest. In their search for food, which is mainly insects, spiders, beetles and other invertebrates, White-browed Babblers spend much time on the ground, fossicking about the leaf and stick litter, around fallen timber and at the base of trees and shrubs. As a group, the birds characteristically bound along the ground and hop along logs and fallen branches, stopping to probe for prey in cracks in the soil or crevices in bark and wood, all the while uttering soft clucking calls to keep in contact. If disturbed, they give an alarm call and the group rapidly dashes for cover, flying low and direct with rapid wingbeats to the nearest dense shrub where they take cover. Once the threat has passed, a lead bird usually drops back to the ground to resume foraging, quickly followed by the rest of the party.

Living the family life – the White-browed Babbler

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