Our recent meditation on the beauty of kestrels kicked off another down-the-rabbithole thought process — this time into birds that mate for life . . . and those that don’t. What does this have to do with the price of eggs? Not a lot, I’m afraid — other than maybe distracting you from its rapid rise during this ongoing cost of living ‘crisis.’
As mentioned, the avian commitment to monogamy seems to appeal to people — the qualities of faithfulness, loyalty, pair-bonding are prized by many cultures.
In the English-speaking culture, the great poem based on this trait is WB Yeats’s The Wild Swans at Coole. Here’s a bit:
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
This evocation of lives shared through good times and bad is beautiful — but even one with as shaky a hold on the mysteries of mathematics as I will note that there are 59 swans: perhaps one has lost its mate and hangs out as a singleton in this lamentation (for that is a collective noun for swans) of swans.
The brown falcons we tracked through last year’s winter, the lofty Wedge Tailed Eagles above, and the Nankeen Kestrels that come and go, mate for life as well. I like to think that the Kestrels which allowed me to park so close to their perch while they hunted dragonflies last Christmas were so permissive because they had a brood nearby to feed. Birds certainly seem more tolerant of the snooping lens when the kids are clamouring for more back home.
Even the hyperactive Welcome Swallows are monogamous. In fact, not only do couples pair up for life, but they live in larger communities of their kind — and other adults lend a hand with feeding the chicks! They all live in close proximity, forming colonies where babysitting responsibilities are shared. Hippie communes! No wonder they’re called ‘welcome’ swallows.
Contrast this dedication with the Sacred kingfishers that come to breed every year in Bicentennial Park: they just pair up for the mating season and then it’s seeya, I’m off. What we might call serial monogamy. Is this why they boast such vivid electric blue plumage? For Kingfishers, every spring is a night at the disco, so that plumage has to be set to maximum pulling power.
Sadly, what prompts me to wrap up this long-dormant post is something reminiscent of Yeats’s wild swans. With winter hard upon us, I’ve been looking out to see if my Brown Falcons have returned to their seasonal haunts, initially encouraged by the occasional sight of one or the other staking out likely hunting spots on and around Gillamatong.
One of the best spots is two large scrubby bushes next to Bombay Road, where last year they would perch together of an evening, or occasionally settle on a fence post on the other side of the road. I took this to be their end-of-day hunting spot, where they could finish up the day’s predation with a plump field mouse or unwary wren.
But a week or so ago, as I spun my pedals past this spot on a late-afternoon bike ride, I saw the remains of a large bird splayed in death on the roadside. I confess I sped up a bit — it was clearly long deceased and the strength of my reaction took me by surprise. It was almost better not to know whether this was a kestrel, a falcon, or a humble kookaburra.
What was most obvious was the beautiful barred tailfeathers, spread in a broad fan in the muddy roadside grass. It didn’t take much later research to confirm that this was a Brown Falcon — surely one of the couple I’d watched last year. It must have been hit by a farmer’s speeding ute, or maybe one of the big articulated logging trucks that ply this narrow byway at maximum warp all day.
I could only hope that the tail fanned involuntarily as a massive impact brought swift surcease; a broken wing and slow suffering seemed an inappropriate end for that fierce predator. I hoped that uncompromising consciousness, fine-tuned to survival and procreation, had no comprehension of what was happening.
Yeats helps here too. His own epitaph, as he recounts in Under Ben Bulben, fits here too:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!
Or in this case, cyclist, pass by. Given everything that’s going on, it’s true that the death of one bird doesn’t tip the balance one way or another. Its life was lived hard and clean; its death came via forces beyond its comprehension. That’s nothing to be sad about. I’m glad I can post photos of it in its pomp, and that it the triggered that firehawks story.
Today, as Archie and I went out for a little drive, we passed this spot again — and there on a fence where last year’s couple used to perch was a shape that looked rather familiar. We pulled over and I had a closer look through binoculars. It was a Brown Falcon, all right. I wondered if it was the bereaved partner, or a younger, more vigorous bird.
Either way, a falcon in that spot seems right and proper — the landscape calls for it and so it’s there. And that’s good. My research (thanks, ChatGPT) reveals that widowed falcons may eventually find another mate, but some take a long time. I like to think that like a landscape without a falcon, they perceive life without a mate as pointless — and sooner or later, a single falcon will pair up again.