Roosting Tawny Frogmouths, Sydney
By Charlie • January 11, 2009 • 12 commentsI’m just back from working on a quick trip to Sydney (Australia) via Bangkok. Three things happened that made the trip really notable. The first was that I worked with a crew member who was born AFTER I started working for the airline (it had to happen but it’s a slap in the wrinkled face when it does). The second was that we were working on New Year’s Eve and at midnight we flew at 31,000 feet over Berlin just as literally thousands of fireworks went off: for as far as we could see the whole of the ground was lit up with tiny flash after tiny flash. Enchanting to see the city at play from such a vantage point. The third - and most relevant for this blog - was that I finally, after many years of searching various Sydney parks, got good views of a bird I last saw fifteen years ago: the weird and wonderful Tawny Frogmouth Podargus strigoides, an Australian member of a group of fourteen nocturnal birds that in taxonomic terms come straight after the owls and are included in the Caprimulgiformes along with nightjars/nighthawks, potoos, and oilbirds.
Looking somewhat like a hybrid between an owl and a fat Nightjar, Tawny Frogmouths are actually quite common in the Sydney area and I really was getting frustrated that I couldn’t find one. They’re found, for example, in the Sydney Botanic Gardens (where I couldn’t find them), in the Royal National Park (where I couldn’t find them), and in the remnant patch of Paperbark eucalypt in Centennial Park where I couldn’t find them either - until that is an elderly gent with a booming voice asked me in a thick Eastern European accent if I’d seen the “Frogmoush” and pointed to a tree I’d just walked past where FOUR were quietly roosting about twenty feet above the path!
Four. Yep, I’d just stumbled in my usual jet-lagged fog past four of the things. Now before I go on to excoriate myself in the usual bout of self-deprecation I tend to go in for on 10,000 Birds I ought to explain that people (and other predators) have been walking past roosting Tawny Frogmouths for millennia, because they’re remarkably well-camouflaged for such large birds. Exquisitely patterned like speckled tree bark, they spend the day sitting silently in the cleft of a tree-trunk or - like Potoos in South America - pretending to be the broken end of a stump or branch, eyes closed, bill pointing skywards, feathers sleeked down so that vertical dark lines in the plumage further break up the birds shape. It’s incredibly effective (have a look at the last set of photos below) and Tawny Frogmouths are very, very difficult to see…
Having said that it was a touch irritating to have the aforementioned gent tut loudly (and when I say loud I mean that ducks were flying up from the lakes 400m away thinking it was gunshot) and shake his head at how utterly hopeless so-called birdwatchers were at finding the birds they wanted to watch. He has a point of sorts I suppose. According to said gent there were actually five frogmouths in the area (two adults and their three offspring) and while I was photographing the four in the tree above he would go and look for the fifth. No-one in downtown Sydney five miles away who heard him discussing these plans seemed to disagree, so he wandered off satisfied and I settled down to get a really good look at the family group above me.
For about ten minutes nothing moved at all (except me as I tried to work out the best place to stand), but as the series of images immediately below shows, a Pied Currawong Strepera graculina flew too close to the family group and the outlying frogmouth woke up and started watching it closely - which gave me a chance to see the huge orange eyes and the enormously broad bill that frogmouths can open wide enough to swallow birders whole (though I can’t actually find a reference to this ever happening)…
Spectacular transformation wouldn’t you say? I can only imagine what goes through the mind of a moth, mouse, or frog as those huge orange eyes bear down on them in the second before the bill opens and they disappear down the throat of a hungry frogmouth (yes, I know, not a lot, I was being literary…).
After about an hour I decided I really ought to go off and photograph the rest of the park when I heard someone just behind me ask if I’d found “the other frogmoush yet”. I turned round to find my new friend standing some fifty yards away and waving me over. Blow me down he’d done it again, and no more than forty feet off the path (and behind a thick rope that left you in no doubt that crossing it would result in a lengthy jail term being yelled at by a procession of eighty-year olds with bullhorns for vocal chords) was the fifth Tawny Frogmouth. It’s in the picture below - can you see it, because to be honest I couldn’t at first…
No? Not easy, but its sitting right up against the trunk of the centre tree about three-fifths of the way up, right above the peeling bark.
The rest of the photos below are of the same bird taken at different angles. The last one is my favourite, and as I’m back in the UK and not being bawled at in a prison cell I can assure you I didn’t have to cross a rope, fence, or any other barrier to get close. Enjoy…
All photos copyright Charlie Moores 2009
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Great post, great pictures! In a flash, this cross between an owl and a character in Star Wars has become my favorite bird. And my daughter’s favorite bird as well. We spent 10 minutes trying to figure out where the face was on each of the pictures.
Oh darn, now I have to go to Australia, see those birds and meet that gent! I’ll bring my ear plugs.
Unbelievable! Great photos, Charlie.
Charlie, I trust you got the name and phone number of this chap who showed you that amazing bird, because I’ll be in Sydney a year from now and I want him to yell at me too. Good job!
Cheers guys - seing these birds was certainly a great start to 2009!
Jack, I think he hangs around the area just so he can yell at birders and tell them how dumb they are for not seeing the frogmoushes
You’ll find him…and if you do, say thanks again from a very grateful Brit!
Hi Charlie (from Aus),
They are an amazing bird, and very difficult to see - unless you take a drive along a quiet county road at night. Then they are like gigantic moths, flitting through your car headlight beam. When the young are quite young, their curiosity can sometimes overtake their camouflaging instinct. We have a great pic from a few years ago, south of Hobart, Tasmania, of a family group of five. The two outer adults are trying their best to be branches, but the three youngsters are being much too inquisitive, and staring, bug-eyed at these noisy photographers, crashing round the bottom of their tree!
Cheers, from sunny Tasmania,
John Tongue
Oops,
The memory can play tricks on you! I just re-checked my photos of the frogmouth family, and found it was four birds, and the adults are alternating with the youngsters, not forming bookends. Still, the point of the post remains, the young still have a lot to learn about being inconspicuous!
You have got more than your fair share of Tawny Frogmouths there!
If you are into sexing frogmouths, I bet you had there 3 males and 2 females. The four birds sitting together look male-female and male-female from left to right. The last bird is again a male. Right?
‘Sexing frogmouths’? What a great phrase - sounds like something off Monty Python. I can just hear Michael Palin in one of their courtroom scenes dressed as a policeman and saying, “And when I walked in, m’lud, there this was birdwatcher standing there sexing frogmouths…blatant as you like he was, m’lud!”.
Actually I’m a little confused about whether the rufous birds and the grey birds are different sexes. Half the references I have say it’s sexual dimporhism and half talk about colour-phases. Anyone out there actually sexed a frogmouth and know for sure??
(By the way, Gallicissa, congrats again on the blog award - much deserved!)
ha…ha…!
“Yes, m’lud, I plead guilty of sexing native frogmouths from time to time!”
See:http://www.birdwingnature.com/pdf/Sri-Lanka-Frogmouth-article.pdf
There are frogmouths that show sexual dimorphism and those that don’t. Also there are species that show sexual polymorphism and those that don’t. So, your confusion is justified! I guess it depends on the species to species. In case of Tawny Frogmouth there appears to be sexual dimorphism and sexual polymorphism, the latter among the females.
I believe in (?all) frogmouths it is the male that does brooding duties during the daytime. In sexually dimorphic Frogmouths it is the female that ‘looks good’ with rufous/darker tones (due to its apparent sex-role reversal). In comparison, the male comes in uninspiring drab plumages (with grey+white+heavy vermiculations) to aid its protective resemblance making it look more like a lichen-covered branch/decaying leaf when engaged in brooding duties - when it is at risk of coming to contact of diurnal predators/angry mobs.
As commented earlier, of the 5 birds you had three individuals appear quite pale/whitish/grey overall matching with the ‘typical male’ frogmouth. In comparison the 2nd and 4th birds in the picture showing 4 together are darker overall fitting in with the ‘typical female’ as far as I am concerned.
Disclaimer: I am no world authority on sexing sexually dimorphic frogmouths and I am very happy to be corrected!
Thanks again for your well wishes on my Blog Award!
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So cool… how the heck did I not visit this place while there? Granted, I did get to see Papuan Frogmouth up near Port Douglas, so I can’t complain.
What awesome photos. I’m preparing for a trip to Australia in a couple of weeks, and your posts on Sydney birding have given me a lot to look forward to!