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Project Noah Nature School
Burhinus grallarius
I nearly stepped on this bird.. sitting on its nest! They are really funny.. When disturbed, they freeze motionless, often in odd-looking postures. For visual predators like raptors (and humans), this works well, but it serves little purpose with introduced feral animals that hunt by scent: notably foxes.
Spotted on Dec 9, 2011
Submitted on Jan 5, 2012
7 Comments
Ha! Such gorgeous eyes! Nice spot.
Fabulously weird birds these. Good spot.
Thanks Nightstar.. and @ Ava T-B I will post it into the mission..
You have a lot of great photos. Beautiful shots!
"Their nest is a scrape or small clearing on bare ground, often near bush or a fallen limb." (from Australia Zoo's web site). They're called scrape nests, and the bird does do something, so I think it counts. There's an interesting book called Avian Architecture by Goodfellow that elaborates on scrape nests too.
Well Ava T-B they don't really build a nest.. they just lay an egg or two and sit on it!
So if this sweet bird is sitting on a scrape nest, it could go in the Animal Architecture mission at http://www.projectnoah.org/missions/8082...