Raptors, including the whistling kite, are intentionally spreading grass fires in northern Australia, the paper argues. The reason: to flush out prey and feast.
Raptors, including the whistling kite, are intentionally spreading grass fires in northern Australia, the paper argues. The reason: to flush out prey and feast.
I always wondered why they carried cigarette lighters.
I thought for sure that Firebirds went extinct a decade or so ago.
Barbecue….When I worked in Grande Prairie in the ’80s, every year the airport would burn off the infield in a controlled burn. Inevitably, raptors would begin circling the airport waiting for the gophers, mice and whatever else was living around. That put a halt to that project as airplanes and raptors don’t necessarily mix well.
Just wait until the Gulls learn how to hitch a cultivator and drive tractors themselves.
Their behaviour is millennia old.
The nomadic aboriginal tribes in many areas of Australia employed what became known as “fire-stick hunting”.
The adult men would form an extended line down-wind of a likely small-game area and the women, kids and the halt and lame would circle around and head up-wind, carrying slow-burning bundles of fire.
The up-wind team would then start a grass fire on a wide front and walk behind it.
As the fire crept across the grass field, it would do several things:
1. Disturb a lot of variously sized critters who would prefer to avoid the flames.
2. Kill and cook anything slower than the fire-front (snakes, lizards, etc.
3. Very importantly, kill off any small, sprouting tree seedlings.
4. Leave a nice field of ash to help regenerate the grasses.
The advancing team collected all the “grilled lizards” and such, whilst the down-wind team clubbed or speared anything they could as it tried to escape the flames.
This pattern was repeated on a regular basis, over thousands of years. Several consequences of the practice and its cessation after European settlement and the introduction of crops and grazing animals.
1. No fires to burn off weed species.
2. Eucalyptus and most Acacia species are “fire resistant”, and, more importantly, ‘fire climax”, i.e. actually require a creeping fire to “crack” their seeds and start germination. Eucalypts are a very invasive species because of this. With cyclic, low-intensity fires, they will out-compete a lot of other plants in marginal areas.
3. It gets ugly at times because, without “hunting” fires going through every five to ten years or so, the “undergrowth” species have a chance to flourish. What happens after several decades of no fire, is that WHEN it happens, the fuel load at ground level is often HUGE.
WHEN it goes, the sheer mass of accumulated fuel; twigs, weeds, etc., and especially the oily eucalypt leaves, generate high temperatures and sustained burning at low levels. This heat is what destroys the complex mass of tiny critters in the top 10 to 20 inches of the soil. The localized low-height heat may also kill even mature trees by simply “cooking” them. It also kills off any seeds that may be dormant until the next rains. Those who have seen the aftermath of the really ugly pine-forest fires in the US will have noticed this same situation. The soil is basically baked to the point that ANY living or dead organic matter in the top layer, is turned to ash, and sterile ash at that.
If heavy rains follow soon after one of these high-temperature under-storey burns, severe erosion will also follow. See recent Californian mudslides for one version.
LOL!
Bird is the word
I for one welcome our feathered and winged overlords.
When. Birds. Go. Bad!
This has a Gary Larsen cartoon written all over it!
That’s not news… That’s Australia. Everything is trying to kill you.
That’s not news… That’s Australia. Everything is trying to kill you.
This is not surprising. Birds, especially those of the crow family are very intelligent and very good at learning how to use tools.
Lol! Maybe they could also learn not to crap on the tractor. That white stuff needs to be cleaned off quick before it mars the paint.
Ironically, 2 creepy bird stories in this video
I listen to this guy every night to relax
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xAREv4lBpg
In Queensland, Australia, 1962, I observed the pre-harvest sugar cane field burnings; when, (even immediately before, because the birds knew what was coming), the fields were ignited, the rats & snakes would flee so the hawks sat and waited on the adjacent roadways right from the get go.
Not to worry … the Global Warmists will,simply claim that the increased temperatures from global warming has increased the size of Raptor brains and has given them new, frightening, skills which are causing an imbalance in nature including the endangerment of small birds, reptiles, and small mammals.
Therefore … global warming (not Darwinian evolution) is destroying the earth in a firey conflagration.
Ha! I suddenly see an Alfred Hitchcock sequel …
It could make Harvey Weinstein’s comeback …
After the fires, I expect our feathered overlords to demonstrate how they destroy the whirling crucifixes or the New Grant Farming Religion.
Wind power meet Birdbrains.