Cassowary - Cyclone Calamity

As promised from last Wednesday's post, today I

will show and tell you about  the Cassowary bird but where are my manners, let me introduce Etty below who lives around the rain forests of Etty Bay Road, near Innisfail, Queensland.  This is the story of how the Cassowaries managed to  survive after the Yasi cyclone on 3 February 2011.  I managed to be the first flight allowed to land a few days after the cyclone devastated the coastline from Cairns to Tully.

 

 

 

 Meet Etty

 

In Australia, the Cassowary is found in far north Queensland's tropical rain forests, swamps and mangrove forests.   These flightless birds study cloud patterns to know where rain will fall  Cyclones draw birds further away than do simple thunderstorms

 

This map will give you a better idea of the area that was devastated by Yasi.  The eye of Yasi was to hit Innisfail at 12noon on 3 February.  This is were my family lived so it was a very worrying time.  However, half an hour before it hit,  the eye diverted further down the coast to Mission Beach and beyond. 

 

 

This is what the eye of cyclone Yasi looked like.

 

 

It was not long before a couple of my friends and myself went out bird watching.  Above was a fairly major road!  We abandoned the car however even then we finally gave up trying to climb over the fallen trees.  There were no birds heard.   I discovered that the birds also knew when the cyclone was to hit and where so they had all flown away 24 hours before.  Isn't that amazing.  Nature always knows best.

 

 

 

This is what the cyclone did to the farmer's banana crop that year and so for us, bananas were a real luxury and usually only eaten when I bought them for the family.  They were over £1 each at the time.

 

 

This is Etty Bay beach after the cyclone.  It is a beautiful small beach and unlike a lot of beaches in Australia, it also had shade from trees.  It was further down the road where my family were living at the time.

 

 

Cassowaries are the largest flightless Australia bird, as tall as a person, with unusual feathers and other features that distinguish it from all other birds.  Females are larger than males reaching 6’6” high and weighing 129lbs.  Can run up to 31 MPH, jump 4’9” & good swimmers in rivers & sea.   

Etty had come down to the beach to find food.  

 

 

 A striking bird with glossy black plumage, the adult southern cassowary has a tall, brown casque (helmet) on top of its head, a vivid blue and purple neck, long drooping red wattles and amber eyes. 

 

The purpose of the tall helmet or casque is unknown but it may indicate dominance and age, as it continues to grow throughout life. Recent research indicates it may also assist Cassowaries in "hearing" the low vibrating sound made by other cassowaries.

 

 

  The Cassowary's coarse hair-like feathers lack barbules that, in all other birds, hold the feathers together. The cassowary has no tail feathers, and its wing stubs carry a small number of long, modified quills which curve around the body.

 

  Its heavy, well-muscled leg has three toes, with the inside toe bearing a large dagger-shaped claw (up to  nearly 5” or 120mm long) used for scratching and fighting other birds. 

 

In April 1926, a group of boys went hunting cassowaries for fun,  As they chased one through the forest, a 16 year old boy called Philip McClean fell over a stick and now the pursuer became the pursued!.  The C turned on the boy, slashed him with his central claw, slicing his jugular vein.  He was the 1st known fatality and one of the few people to be killed of any kind.  The 5"dagger like claw can easily lash out, slice through flesh & disembowel someone.  Since 1990 alone 6 serious attacks on humans have been recorded, especially zoo keepers, one of which was fatal.

 

Reproductive – Egg

Females lay three to eight large, dark bright green or pale green-blue eggs in each clutch into a prepared heap of leaf litter. These eggs measure about 9 by 14 centimetres (3.5 by 5.5 in) — only Ostrich and Emu eggs are larger. 
 

The female is more tolerant of the male when it comes to breeding season but only for a few weeks, (they normally live in separate territories).  The breeding season starts in May or June. When she is ready to lay, he leads her to their chosen nest site, where he dances round her in a circle, throat trembling and making low “boo” noises.  He then leads her to the chosen nest site, she squats, he mounts her and she lays the eggs.

 

The female does not care for the eggs or the chicks but leaves and moves on to lay eggs in the nests of several other males.   

 The male incubates the eggs for 50–52 days, removing or adding litter to regulate the temperature then protects the brown-striped chicks that stay with the male for about nine months, defending them fiercely against all potential predators, including humans. The young males then go off to find a territory of their own.

Back to my story.  As many trees and therefore Cassowary food had gone, there were feeding stations set up and here you see Adrian, a birding friend of mine collecting fruit that Woolworth was donating for the Cassowaries.  Everyday he went and collected it and then went to certain places that Cassowaries had been reported.  He usually went back to these same places every 3^rd day.

 

 

You can see from the casque that this is a younger bird than Etty and I fed it some fruit.  It eat everything whole and as you see, one piece directly after another!  First a peach, then some apples.

 

Cassowaries normally feed on the fruits of several hundred rain forest species and usually pass viable seeds in large dense scats. They are known to disperse seeds over distances greater than a kilometre, and thus play an important role in the ecosystem.   

Germination rates for seeds of the a rare Australian rain forest tree Ryparosa were found to be much higher after passing through a cassowary's gut (92% versus 4%). The Wet Tropics depend on Cassowaries to disperse & germinate up to 150 species of rain forest plants. They will take flowers, fungi, snails, insects, frogs, birds, fish, rats, mice, and carrion.

 

I was fascinated how quickly he eat the fruit however I thought I would slow things down a bit and give him a banana.  He had to work it round so that he had it perpendicular to go down his throat.  Didn’t take too long.  I was amazed that I was able to get close to these usually dangerous birds and privileged to be able to help in their recovery.

 

This next site was at a very up market hotel very high up on a hill in a rain forest and there was a male and his three 6 month old chicks that he brought to find food.  The hotel had been very badly hit and was closed to guests however they were very worried about the fate of these Cassowaries.

 

This was the first time I had ever seen a Cassowary chick and I was thrilled to see 3 of them.

 

The hotel had supplied a drinking vessel for them.

The Cassowary is known as the ‘rainforest gardener’, spreading the seeds of rain forest trees. Sometimes the seeds are so large that no other animal can swallow and disperse them.  Over 238 species of plants have been recorded in the cassowary diet.

 

 

"Young Cassowaries chicks are brown and have buffy stripes. They are often kept as pets in native villages in New Guinea, where they are permitted to roam like barnyard fowl. Often they are kept until they become nearly grown and someone gets hurt.  The Cassowary is mature by about three years of age.

 

 

 

 

 

After eating and drinking they were ready for a rest so we departed on to another site to feed some more hungry Cassowaries.

So back to see Etty having a drink however before I finish I would like you to know some of the other things that threaten Cassowaries.

A number of factors affect Cassowary survival. The major threats include the loss, fragmentation and modification of habitat, vehicle strikes, dog attacks, human interactions, pigs, disease and natural catastrophic events such as Cyclones.

Once common in far north Queensland, the Cassowary's traditional feeding grounds, particularly the coastal lowlands have been seriously reduced by land clearing for farming, urban settlement and other development. Widespread clearing and fragmentation of rain forest habitat have reduced Cassowary numbers, until, today, the Cassowary is threatened with extinction. Cassowaries are sometimes killed when crossing roads. In the Mission Beach area, road accidents are the greatest single cause of Cassowary deaths.

Unrestrained and wild dogs are a major cause of Cassowary deaths, particularly in areas near residential development. Chicks and sub-adults are small enough to be killed by dogs. However, packs of dogs also kill adult birds, Pigs cause disturbance to the rain forest and compete with cassowaries for fallen fruit. They may also eat cassowary eggs and destroy nests.

 

I have a video which can be accessed at


http://youtu.be/Tno5qvsCIRw

 

If there is a black space below, click it and the video will be appear.


 

I hope you enjoyed seeing and hearing about this unusual bird.    I went back the next year and I have a lot more exciting news that I would like to share with you, however I am not promising when I will have it ready to publish as it is going to take days, maybe weeks of work as I have a lot of video to upload and edit.  Anyhow, at this bleak time of the year, it will be something to look forward to!

 

Many thanks for visiting and also thanks for all the comments on my blogs.


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