While I was watching the adult riflebird performing near the cabin, I spotted a Lumholtz’s Tree-kangaroo in the large wattle (Acacia melanoxylon) nearby.
Then it was the young male’s turn:
“Hey you, I am talking to you!”
Trying to get a better view from another angle:
We have seen tree-kangaroos in that tree on several occasions. This male stayed in the tree all day, taking naps between short episodes of feeding.
He tried several branches for a comfortable seat, but this one was has favourite:
Here you get a good view of his long claws and huge hind feet:
What a day! I didn’t know where to point my camera.
What’s next? Tree-roo joining riflebird on the dance pole?
Just before dark yesterday, we had an unexpected visitor: a juvenile cassowary emerged from the the forest, near our veranda. It has probably walked along the creek in search of fallen fruits, mushrooms and, if it is lucky, the occasional frog.
It is about 2/3 adult size, with clearly visible brown juvenile feathers on the thighs and tail, a bright blue neck and short, pink wattles, making it 1-2 years old.
Wattles and casque still have a lot of growing to do.
It might be a young male, as the tail feathers seem longer than on a female. (P.S.: it is a male, as we found out in June 2019, when he mated with a large female.)
The colouration along the neck is already quite vivid.
He was back this morning, pecking at some mushrooms, before wandering down to the creek and into the forest.
We do enjoy watching the Musky Rat-kangaroos (Hypsiprimnodon moschatus) in our garden, and sometimes we tease them with a very tempting morsel:
Musky Rat-kangaroos are mainly fruit-eaters (although they were quite keen on a dead White-tailed Rat, and one musky actually managed to drag the cadaver off into the forest), and they absolutely love avocado.
The seed is big and slippery, of course, so they cannot grab it with their teeth. No matter, from which side it tries to grab the seed, it just cannot get a hold of it:
Today Dad spent half an hour feeding, preening and relaxing in our garden.
When he started to make himself really tall and strutted towards the cabin, I knew that Socks, his new mate for the last three weeks, must be within sight.
As you can see, he is not afraid of her anymore! Indeed, the first of their matings happened the day after I wrote the last blog.
She sat on the ground afterwards for a while, looking slightly dishevelled:
This close-up (doesn’t she have great “eye-brows”!), shows what looks like a new tip of her beak:
From a greater distance (she’s on the left), her beak looks perfectly normal:
Recently a new female cassowary moved in, and she seems to have filled the vacancy left by “Missy”.
Her wattles have a distinctive shape, and we decided to call her “Socks”.
She still has a few brown tail feathers, but is already bigger than the resident male, “Dad”. Our guess is, that she is about 3-4 years old, and this might well be her first mating season.
He is definitely interested in her: initially, he frequently made soft contact calls (similar to a chimpanzee’s or gorilla’s grunting), while standing several meters away from her. She pretended not to be interested, having her back turned to him. As soon as she started to slowly approach him, he got scared and took off like a chased Brush Turkey, protesting loudly.
You can identify the male by his longer tail feathers. ‘Dad’s’ casque tilts to the right, whereas ‘Sock’s’ is straight and unblemished. You can also make out a dash of brown on her backside.
In this short movie, the female is strutting towards the male, who can be seen in the background:
(Unfortunately, my camera does not pick up his vocalizations well,the frequency is very low, just audible to humans.)
Nevertheless, he can’t stay away from her, and the whole scenario kept happening again and again. For a while, you had to be careful in the garden, as Dad might come crashing through the forest or across the lawn at high speed!
Now, after several weeks of travelling together (but at a safe distance from each other), she readily follows him, but he still gets spooked when she gets too close.
Here, she is feeding, and Dad is making his way past her , before they walk away together:
Probably hormone levels have to rise for mating behaviour to start.
Hopefully, we’ll have a new generation of cassowaries visiting later in the year!
We have seen tree-kangaroos in that tree on several occasions. This male stayed in the tree all day, taking naps between short episodes of feeding.
