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Grey-crowned Babbler |
Sightings
Grey-crowned Babblers are the most common Babblers in our area, around Narrabri, New South Wales. Like all babblers, they come in groups or families and forage in trees or paddocks while continuously communicating with each other. Seen regularly in bushland, but also more open country and along roadsides.
Many family units are happy to live in very little dense vegetation by roadsides, often with only one sufficiently large tree to provide them with shelter. In late October 2005 we spotted six separate groups in the area of Yarrie Lake and Bohena, west to south-west of Narrabri, along roadsides over a distance of only 20 km.
Photos
Race temporalis
A family of Grey-crowned Babblers has found something interesting (click on image for larger version)
Grey-crowned Babbler (race "temporalis") foraging on the ground (click on image for larger version)
Lateral view of a Grey-crowned Babbler (race "temporalis"; click on image for full-size display)
Frontal view of a Grey-crowned Babbler (race "temporalis")
Grey-crowned Babbler (race "temporalis") preening itself, seen against evening sunlight (click on image for larger version)
Note how the birds shown above are mostly coloured in various shades of grey, with a tinge of brown. It is unknown to us whether the fledgling bird displayed near the end of the page kept its more brownish plumage or later molted into darker colours. However, in this context the colours of the adult bird shown in the following two photos are extraordinary. It was spotted by us in September 2008 in the Pilliga scrub, between Narrabri and Coonabarabran in inland northern NSW, while its colours are more typical of race "rubeculus", which is found in north-west Australia, with a clinal transition that should not show for more than 1000 km from where this bird was found.
Lateral view of a Grey-crowned Babbler (race "temporalis") with most extraordinary brown colours (click on image for larger version)
More frontal view of the same bird as in the photo above (click on image for larger version)
Fledgling Grey-crowned Babbler (race "temporalis"), hardly able to fly and still stumbling along the branches of the tree in which it is hiding, while its parents go mad about the photographer in the vicinity (I; click on image for larger version)
Fledgling Grey-crowned Babbler (race "temporalis", II), click on image for larger version
Habits
Grey-crowned Babblers are gregarious birds that are almost always on the move and busy with something. Quite often seen by us together with a mob of Apostlebirds.