I often see these pretty little birds in my garden. I saw what I assume was a pair this morning and reading up on them came across this piece which certainly adds a whole new dimension to their character for me. đ
âHelloooo laydeez!â Good looking wren supplied by Mick Brown.
Fairy wrens, eh? Â Are they naughty or what?
Famously described by Sir David Attenborough as âthe most promiscuous bird knownâ, much research has been done into the convoluted and apparently quite permissive sex-lives of these rather adorable tiny blue birds and their little brown lady friends. Â Both sexes of superb fairy wrens (Malurus cyaneus) are socially monogamous (staying in the same partnerships), but sexually promiscuous (self-explanatory).
Whilst I could tell many entertaining anecdotes about the louche behaviour of fairy wrens, my favourite one, which I learnt about in a short piece by Mary Kille in edition 55 of Yellowthroat (newsletter of Birds Tasmania), regards the peculiar practice of furgling.
Furgling (anecdotally, a word which is a portmanteau of burgling and something else risquĂ© that starts with âFâ), is a practice known from several species of wrens, which involvesâŠ
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I’d never heard of fairy wrens, or about that kind of promiscuous behavior in birds!
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The little birds are quite common here but I had no idea they did that either. I thought the photos were lovely in that post. I hope I’ll be able to take some bird photos this spring.
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