Forest Ang photographed a Common Myna (Acridotheres tristis) at a park in Penang, Malaysia one day in June 2009. On examining his images in the comfort of his home, he was intrigued by one of the images. The feathers around the posterior opening of the myna, the vent, showed signs that air was being passed out. For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the term vent, this is the common opening through which faeces from the digestive system, uric acid from the excretory system and sperm or egg from the reproductive system pass.

So Forest asked a pertinent question: “Can birds fart?” He was unable to confirm that the bird made any farting sound when he was photographing it. After all, the place was noisy with many people around.

The web is full of answers to the question, with conflicting views.

Backyard Birding has this to say: “…any animal which eats generates gas and this gas must go somewhere. So while birds possess a relatively short intestinal tract, thus producing a smaller amount of gas, they do produce some. And it is expelled through the normal means.”

Laura’s Birding Blog says no. There is no “noticeable eruptions of significant volumes of intestinal gas. Avian intestines are short and evacuate wastes frequently. Any gases produced in digestion leak out as fast as they’re produced, so there isn’t the opportunity for build-up that leads to those explosive releases we cheerfully or disgustedly call farts.”

However, Mike Murray, a veterinarian at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, has this to say: “It’s not that they can’t. They just don’t need to. Birds have the anatomical and physical ability to pass gas, but if I saw gas in a bird’s gastrointestinal tract on an x-ray, I’d suspect that something abnormal was going on in there.”

We believe that birds do fart, maybe under certain circumstances. After all, photographic evidence proves that the Common Myna in the picture actually passed wind.

Howard Banwell sent in this piece on 16th June 2009 as he was curious about the presence of two, yet-to-be-fledged Black-naped Oriole (Oriolus chinensis) chicks perching on a branch of a tree.

“Hearing some quiet and unrecognisable cries near to where I was walking in Changi Business Park yesterday, I investigated and finally spotted these two chicks in the lower branches of a modest-sized tree.

I watched them until an adult flew in to the top branches, sounding an alarm call, KAR, KAW - very much like a crow. At which point I moved away. They looked so young and fluffy that they ought still to be in their nest. And, assuming they can’t fly without tail feathers (or can they?), how did they get here when there was no nest to be seen in the tree? It is possible there was one, I suppose, since the mid-levels of the tree were quite dense.


“I returned to the same tree the next evening. One chick was perched close to the previous day’s position. There was no sign of a second chick. I searched the tree with binoculars from every angle, and while I cannot definitively say there was no nest, I certainly could not see one.
The following day I returned a third time. There was no sign of either chick in the tree. Then I heard one calling, and discovered it high up (about 8m?) in a rain tree about 10m away. Between the original tree and the rain tree were two smaller trees, not quite touching.

“It is possible that the chick in the rain tree was the offspring of a different oriole nesting here, but that would seem a big coincidence, and I certainly did not hear a chick calling from this tree on the previous two days.
So, if it was one of the same chicks, I imagine it must be able to fly/glide very short distances between the trees, even without tail feathers, and then make its way up into the higher branches.
If so, quite a high degree of mobility.”


It has been reported that nestlings of the Eurasian Golden Oriole (Oriolus oriolus) begin to preen and exercise their wings at about 10-12 days old. This is about when most of their down feathers start to be replaced with adult feathers. A few days later, when they are still not ready to fledge, they may start to leave the nest, perching on nearby branches or sometimes even on the ground. They fledge only when they are around 16-20 days old.

The Black-naped Oriole chicks may well be also wandering away from their nest…

Reference:
Walther, B. A. & P. J. Jones, 2008. Family Oriolidae (Orioles). In: del Hoyo, J., A. Elliott & D. A. Christie (eds.), Handbook of the birds of the world. Vol. 13. Penduline-tits to Shrikes. Lynx Editions, Barcelona. Pp. 692-731.

Cedric Ng Shuwei a.k.a flexi showcased his images of hummingbirds photographed recently in El Valle de Antón, Coclé, Panama. The Violet-crowned Woodnymph (Thalurania colombica) (below left) and the Rufous-crested Couquette (Lophornis delattrei) (below right) are shown hovering in front of the flowers of Stachytarpheta mutabilis,.

The image on below (left) shows the Violet-headed Hummingbird (Klais guimeti) collecting nectar from the same herb.

These smallish, highly colourful hummingbirds are constantly active, darting from flower to flower and hovering in front of flowers to harvest the nectar. This is an energy demanding activity and the birds need to be sustained by harvesting a large amount of nectar.

Although we do not have the hummingbirds in this part of the world, we do have the flowering plant, Stachytarpheta mutabilis, an introduced ornamental from Tropical America. Here, the flowers attract sunbirds. Another species we have, also from the same continent, is S. indica or snakeweed, a weed of open areas.

Asians, especially those from Southeast Asia, tend to be more familiar with hummingbirds, as until so many years back, we were exposed to publications, videos and films produced overseas, showing neo-tropical rather than tropical flora and fauna. So most of us we grew up believing that the many sunbirds that flock to our flowers are hummingbirds.

Well, sunbirds are from this part of the world while hummingbirds are from the American tropics, the so-called neotropics. The former do not usually hover in front of a flower to harvest nectar. They perch on a branch or the flowering head to get at the flower. Hummingbirds on the other hand always hover in front of flowers.

This post is a cooperative effort between NaturePixels.org and BESG to bring the study of bird behaviour through photography to a wider audience.

Chris Lee’s image of a Red-bearded Bee-eater (Nyctyornis amictus) taking a beetle complements an earlier post of the bird taking a cicada and another taking a lizard as well as a cicada.

The food of the Red-bearded Bee-eater is mainly insects, hawked in flight. These include cicadas, crickets, large beetles, termites, ants, wasps, hornets and carpenter bees.

This post is a cooperative effort between NaturePixels.org and BESG to bring the study of bird behaviour through photography to a wider audience.
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“The story of this bird at Kinabatangan Jungle Camp in Sabah, West Malaysia, is quite interesting as narrated by ‘Towkay Burong’ Mr. Robert Chong. The bird was rescued sick from the river bank, was not able to fly thus made it easy to be captured. This was a few years back, was taken to the camp, nursed back to health by the camp workers. Food came in abundance from the camp kitchen in the form of chicken and beef pieces as I had noticed. With such nutrition it is of no small wonder that the bird recovered.

“This bird is free-ranging and is still wild, it would return to the camp when it feels the need to have some easy pickings, but it could also disappear for some months during the mating season.

“Birds can thus learn to associate humans with food and thus not become afraid of us. That is if we were to demonstrate to the birds that we bear them no harm. So some bird guides from Goa, India to Thailand and some other places had learned this to their great advantage, charging bird photographers a hefty fee for the easy opportunity of a quick photo fix. However I am not against this form of commercial enterprise, as it is of benefit to the three parties involved. Maybe in the longer term the locals could see the benefits of nature conservation.”

KC Tsang
24th June 2009