Black fantails, Hamilton

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Bennyboy87654
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Re: Black fantails, Hamilton

Postby Bennyboy87654 » Sat Oct 28, 2017 2:03 pm

Clinton9 wrote:To age juvenile & first winter from adult NZ fantails, you need to look at secondary coverts.

In adult the secondary coverts are black and same color and had bright white tips in normal, black in dark phase.

In first winter the outer juvenile secondary coverts are brown, tipped orangish-buff (brown in dark phase) and new middle and inner black 1st adult feathers, tipped white (black in dark phase)

In juvenile the secondary covets are dark brown and tipped orange.

Otherwise body plumages of adults & first winters are same and cannot be tell apart.
Neither the absence of white ear spots the sure way to age the dark phase NZ fantails.

wandering-albatross-in-antarctica-AT33CG (1).jpg



Bennyboy87654 wrote:I know that the Black Fantails have the white spot by the eye which is quite recognisable, but I saw one without the (or just a faded) white spot, would this perhaps suggest a Juvenile?

Thats some good knowledge to have, I'll try to use it in the future, Thanks for the info
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David Riddell
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Re: Black fantails, Hamilton

Postby David Riddell » Sat Feb 29, 2020 8:10 pm

Was at the new Surrealist Garden at the Hamilton Gardens this evening watching a performance by national treasures The Big Muffin Serious Band (part of the Hamilton Gardens Arts Festival) when, during their bluegrass version of Smoke on the Water, a black fantail flew across right in front of the band. Think there have been black fantails in this area since at least 2006?
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Neil Fitzgerald
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Re: Black fantails, Hamilton

Postby Neil Fitzgerald » Thu Mar 05, 2020 12:57 pm

Nice. I haven't seen any over the past year. Always good to know they persist.
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RussCannings
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Re: Black fantails, Hamilton

Postby RussCannings » Mon Aug 02, 2021 1:44 pm

Finally lucked into my first black fantail in Hamilton (Exactly as they look in the South Island). This bird was with two typical fantails at Shaw's Bird Park in the south end of Hamilton (off Hall Rd), along one of the loop trails.

Also two free-flying drake Mandarin Ducks (the first ones I've seen here though I believe they are known to be around). This location is home to many captive Carolina Wood Ducks, though many have also escaped/released and begun to breed in the wild. Some have shown up further afield. I am not sure what the status of the Mandarin Ducks are though.

This is also the Spotted/Barbary capital of the Waikato as hordes are attracted to the grain given out to the captive birds as well as numerous 'wild' birds in the area.

Russ
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Peter Frost
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Re: Black fantails, Hamilton

Postby Peter Frost » Mon Aug 02, 2021 11:49 pm

In 1969, the late Graeme Caughley, a globally renown New Zealand population ecologist and conservationist, writing in Notornis, suggested that the gene for melanism in the New Zealand fantail was dominant but that its frequency was held in equilibrium by heterosis. This is a process in which individuals containing copies of both a dominant and a recessive gene (heterozygotes) have some advantage over pure-bred, homozygous, individuals. In the case of the fantail, this means either those with two copies of the dominant ‘black’ or the recessive ‘pied’ gene. For this equilibrium to persist, however, breeding must be random, something that can be achieved in large connected populations. But what happens when populations become isolated through habitat fragmentation? Does this lead to less random breeding and a shift in the frequencies of genes for ‘pied’ and ‘black’ plumages? The apparent increasing number of reports of the black fantails in the southern and now, perhaps, central North Island, where wooded habitats are often fragmented, suggests that this might be so. Maybe data from the New Zealand Bird Atlas will help answer this, but only if in your NZ Bird Atlas observations in eBird you note whether the fantails groups that you see are all normal-coloured birds (‘pied’ form), melanistic birds only, or a mix of both (ideally recording the numbers of each).

The paper is Caughley, G. (1969). Genetics of melanism in the Fantail Rhipidura fuliginosa. Notornis, 16, 237–240 (downloadable at https://notornis.osnz.org.nz/system/files/Notornis_16_4.pdf)

Peter
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RussCannings
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Re: Black fantails, Hamilton

Postby RussCannings » Tue Aug 03, 2021 6:55 am

Cheers Peter,

At this stage I don't think ebird has the option for the dark morph to be explicitly recorded. This might be a worthwhile addition however so I'll look into it.

Russ
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Peter Frost
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Re: Black fantails, Hamilton

Postby Peter Frost » Tue Aug 03, 2021 10:01 am

eBird has the option to enter comments on any species that you record (and that includes via the mobile app). These can include observations on plumage, behaviour, group sizes and more. Not many submissions include such comments, unfortunately. Admittedly, these don't lend themselves easily to automated data processing (but don't dismiss the possibility of an AI tool being developed to search through such data). We will have lost something if our note-taking now only consists of lists, numbers (unverifiable), and apparent effort. Personally, I've largely foregone using the mobile app in favour of pencil and paper, where the initially blank pages encourage me to look and think about what I'm seeing. But then perhaps I'm a fossil ;)

Peter
David Melville
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Re: Black fantails, Hamilton

Postby David Melville » Tue Aug 03, 2021 10:18 am

Peter - great that Caughley's paper has been brought into the light (I, for one, was unaware of it) - surely with such encouragement everyone logging Fantail on eBird can include colour forms - although as you and Russ have noted extracting the data may be a bit more problematical. A note in the BirdsNZ magazine and Forest and Bird magazine should elicit further support and wide geographical coverage. David
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Peter Frost
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Re: Black fantails, Hamilton

Postby Peter Frost » Tue Aug 03, 2021 10:38 am

I wrote a note about this in the Regional Roundup report for Whanganui in the September 2019 issue of the Birds New Zealand magazine, including the suggestions made above, but I don't know if it elicited any action. Nevertheless, I'll see if I can put something together as a separate short article for Birds New Zealand and, possibly, Forest & Bird, dolling it up with some photographs and perhaps a bit more explanation of Graeme Caughley's argument and evidence (without getting too technical).

Peter
Jim_j
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Re: Black fantails, Hamilton

Postby Jim_j » Tue Aug 03, 2021 4:47 pm

Interesting.
Is it true though that the habitat (in the central North Island anyway) is more fragmented?
Obviously yes compared to 300 years ago - but compared to say 100 years ago?
With pine forests, shelter belts, suburban gardens etc which fantails seem quite happy in I wonder if there is more than enough habitat to allow the genetic flow?

Cheers
Jim

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