Magpie Geese Normanton, originally uploaded by Ladymaggic.
Magpie Geese
In the wet season, Magpie Geese form large colonies whose honking sounds carry across the water.
Floating nests are constructed and the birds mate - one male and one or two females. By the middle of the wet season, the males are incubating 4-15 (but typically 8) eggs. The males raise the young and must remain near the nests. Seeds of Wild Rice (Oryza meridionalis) are important food for the adults and rapidly-growing hatchlings but, because of the large colonies, food is in short supply near the nests by the end of the nesting season and the birds are in poor condition for lack of food.
Late in the wet season, when the young birds can fly, the Magpie Geese migrate to permanent waters where they spend the dry season. The Bulkuru sedge or Water Chestnut (Eleocharis dulcis) becomes important, the Magpie Geese digging their faces into the mud and using their hooked beaks to extract the starch-rich corms (underground parts of the stem); the heavy face-plate protects the birds in this activity.
With the first rains of the next wet season, food availability increases rapidly and the birds' condition improves, in preparation for the next breeding season.
Magpie geese are long-lived, with lifespans of up to 30 years. The species was first described from the Hawkesbury River (NSW) by famed English ornithologist, John Latham, who gave it the species name 'semipalmata', referring to the feet, which are only partially webbed.
Once abundant across Australia, drainage of swampy grassland habitats in southern Australia a century ago now sees large colonies only in northern Australia. These are at the Laggons at Double Lagoon in Normanton and they spend a few months here laying eggs, caring for young and the flying off to Russia and the north following the sun and food.
They come here in large hordes of thousands.
Indigenous people hunt Magpie Geese by various means: throwing sticks, from underwater using hollow reeds as snorkels or stalking and hand-catching. They are prized food and are usually roasted; the eggs are also eaten. Although protected from non-indigenous hunters in most of Australia, the Magpie Goose is a declared game species in the Northern Territory.
The Magpie Goose is widespread throughout coastal northern and eastern Australia. It can be seen from Fitzroy River, Western Australia, through northern Australia to Rockhampton, Queensland, and has been extending its range into coastal New South Wales to the Clarence River and further south.
They tend to gather in wetland areas and dirty the waters and surrounding areas if the water is insufficient to cope with the numbers.
In the wet season, Magpie Geese form large colonies whose honking sounds carry across the water.
Floating nests are constructed and the birds mate - one male and one or two females. By the middle of the wet season, the males are incubating 4-15 (but typically 8) eggs. The males raise the young and must remain near the nests. Seeds of Wild Rice (Oryza meridionalis) are important food for the adults and rapidly-growing hatchlings but, because of the large colonies, food is in short supply near the nests by the end of the nesting season and the birds are in poor condition for lack of food.
Late in the wet season, when the young birds can fly, the Magpie Geese migrate to permanent waters where they spend the dry season. The Bulkuru sedge or Water Chestnut (Eleocharis dulcis) becomes important, the Magpie Geese digging their faces into the mud and using their hooked beaks to extract the starch-rich corms (underground parts of the stem); the heavy face-plate protects the birds in this activity.
With the first rains of the next wet season, food availability increases rapidly and the birds' condition improves, in preparation for the next breeding season.
Magpie geese are long-lived, with lifespans of up to 30 years. The species was first described from the Hawkesbury River (NSW) by famed English ornithologist, John Latham, who gave it the species name 'semipalmata', referring to the feet, which are only partially webbed.
Once abundant across Australia, drainage of swampy grassland habitats in southern Australia a century ago now sees large colonies only in northern Australia. These are at the Laggons at Double Lagoon in Normanton and they spend a few months here laying eggs, caring for young and the flying off to Russia and the north following the sun and food.
They come here in large hordes of thousands.
Indigenous people hunt Magpie Geese by various means: throwing sticks, from underwater using hollow reeds as snorkels or stalking and hand-catching. They are prized food and are usually roasted; the eggs are also eaten. Although protected from non-indigenous hunters in most of Australia, the Magpie Goose is a declared game species in the Northern Territory.
The Magpie Goose is widespread throughout coastal northern and eastern Australia. It can be seen from Fitzroy River, Western Australia, through northern Australia to Rockhampton, Queensland, and has been extending its range into coastal New South Wales to the Clarence River and further south.
They tend to gather in wetland areas and dirty the waters and surrounding areas if the water is insufficient to cope with the numbers.
Large, noisy flocks of up to a few thousand birds congregate to feed on aquatic vegetation. The Magpie Goose is a specialized feeder with wild rice, Oryza, Paspalum, Panicum and spike-rush, Eleocharis, forming the bulk of its diet.
During the breeding season, Magpie Geese build nests in secluded places, usually close to wetlands. The nest is almost single-handedly constructed by the male. It usually consists of a simple unlined cup placed either in a floating platform of trampled reeds or built in tree-tops. Pairs of geese mate for life, but a male may have two females. Two females may occasionally use the same nest to lay the large, oval, off-white coloured eggs. All adults share incubation and care for the young.
http://birdsinbackyards.net/species/Anseranas-semipalmata
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