Friday, March 29, 2024

FROM THE RIDGE: Nature can be both remarkable and cruel

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The annual bludgers have recently turned up. I’d been expecting them. Good word, bludger.
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It was created in Australia as common slang.

Originally it was used to describe the lowest of the low, a man who lived off the earnings of a prostitute. A pimp. He protected these earnings by the use or threat of the use of a bludgeon. And that of course is a cudgel or a stick with a heavy end.

But during the early part of the 20th century the meaning changed in both Australia and New Zealand. It came to mean a person who avoids working, or doing their share of work, a loafer, a hanger-on, one who does not pull their weight.

Anyway, they’ve turned up here and I expect probably in your district as well.

They are the Shining Cuckoos (Pipiwharauroa).

They announce their presence with their distinctive double whistle, which is repeated several times and then a couple of descending calls.

I usually hear their call somewhere around mid-to-late September and it’s my feeling they have been getting here earlier over time, but I haven’t been keeping a record over the decades, so can’t be certain of this.

I’ve rarely seen them as they are usually hidden in the foliage of the trees, but they are iridescent dark green above and white below.

They herald spring and bring news of far off places. No 14-day locked up in isolation for these fellows.

They fly in from the Bismarck Archipelago (New Guinea) and Solomon Islands, which is a decent flight for a modest bird weighing in at just over 20 grams.

For this feat, I admire them.

They return to their same territory that they spent the summer in last year

Now, we get to the bludging part of their character.

We also have lovely little Grey Warblers (Riroriro) in the trees around the house and out on the farm.

They are a small bird of only 6.5g and fairly nondescript. I hardly see them as well but hear them all the time.

And they have a lovely call which is a long, plaintive wavering trill that rises and falls. Their call is an early harbinger of the spring and summer to come.

They mate and nest early and often rear several chicks in that first brood.

They should stop while they are ahead, but they think that went so well, let’s give it another go.

They lay another clutch and while out getting a feed, the Shining Cuckoo, who has just turned up from their fancy winter holiday in the Solomons, makes an appearance.

They often target the very same warblers as last year. They will kick out one of the warbler’s own eggs and lay a single one of theirs in the nest and then shag off for a great summer just eating and relaxing before returning to the tropics.

But it gets worse.

When the baby cuckoo hatches, it boots out the other nestlings from the nest so that the two parents only have him or her to feed. Classic case of fratricide, although technically these aren’t their own siblings they are murdering.

You would think the warblers would catch on that this noisy, incessant youngster, who looks completely different to the last clutch, but the kindhearted, although dim, warblers spend weeks feeding this voraciously hungry chick who becomes bigger than themselves.

It repays them without a backward glance when it leaves the nest to have a great summer like its parents and then remarkably knows in what exact direction to fly across that vast ocean to land on the very island that its parents winter on without ever having met each other.

Nature can be both remarkable and cruel.

Just like humanity.

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