Butcherbird wheeling and dealing

We've had a very interesting week watching (and participating) in the relationships amongst our butcherbirds. On the back side of the house we have our original pied butcherbird family, Butch and Cass and two of their adult children. Along the road is a new pied butcherbird group of five or six, two of whom are two older kids of Butch and Cass, namely Teddy and Tommy, who, I am quite convinced once saved Gitie's life by warning her of a nearby highly venomous snake, and chasing it out of our yard. Lastly, we have our grey-backed butcherbird family outside the front fence and down into the gully, Larry and Harrie, and various of their adult kids, but not still in the same group. Larry also risked his life once to repel a snake from our house, as I mentioned elsewhere.

The problem is that the new Teddy-Tom group has been trying to scare away Larry's group. Larry is smaller because the pied BBs are slightly bigger than the grey BBs, so he has to be careful not to get into a fight. Although no one has attacked him, they certainly use their size to intimidate him. The previous Friday, Gitie got everyone to behave and share together, by refusing to feed anyone who started trouble. This worked for a  few days, until the Teddy group again wanted to evict the Larry group altogether. But surprisingly, this time the Butch group were having none of it, and they defended Larry against Teddy, and repelled the Teddy group. Obviously, they though it was more of a threat to them to have another group of their own species encroaching than to have Larry's gang.

Larry has one trick up his sleeve: he and the other grey BBs are prepared to stay up and active at dusk for about ten minutes longer than the pied BBs. So they come to our kitchen yard as dusk is settling in and get a good feed without interruption by either the pied BBs or the magpies, who also hit the sack early.

For obvious reasons, we don't want to lose touch with any of the three groups, and, as we are regarded by the birds, and we treat ourselves, as part of their community network, we have no qualms about telling them what we want and only giving food if they make arrangements that give each group some access to our yard. The remarkable thing is how they negotiate to do this. But surprisingly, food is not the big issue, it is status. This morning, when I went out to look for Larry, I found him quite alone by the front fence, and I threw him some food and he started eating. But no sooner had he started, than he let out a long, loud holler, which inevitably attracted everyone else to come and try to take his food. But the status from showing them that the human was feeding him was more important than the actual food the human was giving. So, yet another flap with the magpies eating, the Teddy gang trying to intimidate Larry, and Larry holding his ground ensued. Now it has started raining and bugs will be plentiful, but it won't stop another round of posturing later on.

The whole thing is just so human, if only we would admit it to ourselves!