 |
www.mdavid.com.au |
Darters - comfortable on land, in the air and in waterI admire these critters. They swim well, fly well and catch fish well too. |
 |
The Darter (Anhinga melanogaster) has a sharp beak which it uses to spear fish |
A walk past one of the large ponds in Sydney's Centennial Park will usually involve seeing some Darters. However that is thankfully not the limit of their range in Australia. Darters exist in most of the country. |
|
This Darter is drying its feathers after a swim |
These birds are unusual for a water bird in that they don't have water-repellant feathers. That means the wings get drenched after a swim and so the darter will stand with its wings held out in the sun to dry. |
|
Left: Looks like a snake, but it's a bird. A Darter swimming partly submerged |
Darters are sometimes called snake birds and it's easy to understand why when you see one in the water. They often swim partly-submerged with just that slim head and neck above the surface. It really can look like a snake when it does that.
This family of darters (above) was in a paperbark tree overhanging a lake The photos of the chicks in their nest were taken using a lot of care. That's because many types of birds become especially nervous during breeding time, and sometimes having a human wander nearby can frighten the parents into abandoning their brood altogether. So it's essential to watch the parent birds and to see if their behavior changes when you approach. For example, do the parents spend more time away from the nest than normal? While taking these photos, the parents were in the nest and they were not even looking at me, which I took to be a good sign. The photo above-left was taken from across a lake using a telescopic lens. The same telescopic lens was used in the photo at right, and it was taken from the cover of some trees. Even though you sometimes see people on TV posing right alongside chicks in nests that is something I would not do. It's more important for me to ensure the birds are happy, than it is to get that perfect shot. Mature male darters have more dark plumage than females and the young ones. It's the male which builds a nest. The nest is assembled in a tree alongside water and both sexes play their part in looking after the eggs and young. Darters mainly eat fish although they will also eat other small critters from the water such as insects. I've read about them catching fish by spearing them with their long, sharp beak. Although I haven't personally seen them doing that the fish caught by the darter below clearly has a hole in its side which suggests it's been speared. And yes, it did manage to swallow that fish whole.
|
Above: Darter chick. |
 |
 |
||
| Female darters have similar colouring to the young ones. So I can't be totally sure the bird at left is a female. But there's no doubting that the one at right is a male | |||
ReferenceReader's Digest Complete Book of Australian Birds, Reader's Digest Services Pty Ltd, 1979 |
|
|
