Inbred chough?
White-winged choughs live in many parts of Canberra and frequent parks and gardens as well as bushland. They are birds of great character, trotting about in groups of six or more. One year a lone, young chough lived in our driveway for a while, having been abandoned due to a broken wing. All the neighbours considered it their own private chough.
The first photo shows regular looking choughs. I'm sorry you can't see the white window on the wing. However amongst this group I saw today, were some choughs with malaligned beaks. My husband suggested this deformity might be due to inbreeding. Has anyone observed this before?
Oh dear, that's very disturbing. I haven't seen anything quite like that before.
ReplyDeleteI know. I didn't really figure it out till I got home and looked at the pictures but I think more than one was like that.
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ReplyDeletePoor chough. Sort of impressive that it has made it to adulthood. I would have guessed poor nutrition or disease but then I got curious and looked it up - there is quite a high level of inbreeding in choughs (because of their cooperative breeding system where offspring do not disperse but hang around the parents as helpers).
ReplyDeleteYeah I wondered about feeding in the nest. It can't have been easy. Thanks for looking this up Iso. So the choughs need to get a life?
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