The Problem of Parenthood The Life of Birds

CROAKY CHIRPING

For this brown pelican, the problems of bringing new life into the world

have started even before the eggs have hatched.

They've had to be kept cool or warm, according to the time of day,

and they've had to be defended. But that's only the beginning of things!

FEEBLE CHIRPING

Once their chicks have disentangled themselves from their shells,

the first job of the brown pelicans here in Florida, as with all bird parents, is to find food urgently.

Few are in a greater hurry than the Lapland bunting,

for summer in the Arctic is desperately short.

Food is rushed in,

droppings are ferried out...

Both parents labour tirelessly

and since it's light 24 hours a day at this time of the year,

they do so nonstop.

As a consequence, the chicks grow at extraordinary speed

and only 12 days after hatching, they will fledge.

Dippers are also dedicated and industrious parents.

A nest behind a waterfall is excellently concealed but tricky to visit.

Nonetheless, these dippers, between them, bring a batch of food to their young every ten minutes.

Gouldian finches in Australia make their nests

in holes in trees.

The disadvantage of doing that is that it may be so gloomy within

that it's difficult to see where the chicks are.

The solution - vividly coloured spots

on the side of the mouth.

And when vibrations made by a parent as it enters tell these still blind chicks that food is on the way,

they quickly provide extra guidance.

With gapes patterned as vividly as this,

the parents have no doubt about where to post their food parcels.

These are zebra finches.

And these extraordinary objects are young firetail finches.

What look like goggles are actually markers to indicate the corners of the mouth.

These are the chicks of Australian rosella parrots.

Their parents started incubating as soon as their first egg was laid.

That, therefore, was the first to hatch and its chick, the first to be fed.

So at first, there's a difference in size between the chicks.

But rosella parents are scrupulously fair and they make quite sure

that even the youngest gets its proper share of food.

Even so, after ten days, the eldest is still the biggest.

But remarkably,

it sometimes shares its food with the youngest and the smallest.

They're beginning to lose their down

and proper feathers start showing through.

An itchy business, apparently.

HIGH-PITCHED CHIRPING

Three weeks later, in spite of five days' difference in age between the oldest and the youngest,

they're all the same size. Rosellas feed the chicks with a regurgitated porridge of chewed up seeds.

Great crested grebes, on the other hand,

offer their newly-hatched young much stranger meals.

Feathers.

It's not a mistake or an occasional quirk. Swallowing feathers is essential for the health of grebes.

They form a lining in the stomach

which protects it from the sharp bones of fish - the main part of a grebe's diet.

When the chicks grow up, they'll swallow their own feathers, but now their parents provide them.

And that's just as well, considering the size of the fish

that the youngsters are prepared to tackle early on in their young lives.

These open-billed storks nesting in the sweltering heat of Thailand have also got young chicks.

One of their problems is keeping cool and one of the ways of solving it is to take a nice cool shower.

But some showers are nicer than others!

The adults bring water back to the nest in their crops

and empty it over the featherless chicks.

But showers are not the only things that the chicks need.

Sitting virtually naked in the baking sun could be lethal. During the hottest part of the day,

they're in desperate need of shade and the parents provide it.

The storks, like many birds, are exemplary parents,

tending to the needs of their offspring with care and devotion.

But not all birds behave in such a way.

It's an idyllic scene.

A pair of birds devotedly caring for their chicks in the springtime.

But for the adult birds it's a very testing time, particularly if,

like these coots, you may have as many as nine chicks and the food supply is far from certain.

Things start well enough.

One of the adults uses particles of food

to tempt a newly-hatched chick

down from the nest and onto the water.

The little flotilla sets off under the care of both parents.

But the food they prefer comes in very small instalments - tiny shrimps and water insects.

It takes a lot of collecting.

And there are other troubles and stresses.

Trespassers can't be allowed onto the coots' feeding grounds.

They have to be seen off, no matter how big they are.

Then, nearly always on the third day,

the parents begin to lose patience. A chick begs for food yet again...

..and is punished.

Each chick in turn gets this harsh treatment.

Maybe the adults are testing them to see which are the strongest.

After a time, they concentrate their punishment on one,

and to such a degree

that it stops begging and so starves to death.

But unless there is a superabundance of food, the persecution goes on.

In the end, the coots will only raise two or three

out of their brood of nine.

Life for young pelicans can be equally brutal. As they grow, so do their appetites.

No matter how hard the parents work,

they cannot bring enough food for all three.

The last to hatch was always smaller than the other two.

It was always the last to be fed and now the two older ones turn on it.

Now it will not survive.

Its parents will not bring any food to it on the ground.

And that's not the end of it.

No sooner has one been pushed out of the nest, than a second will follow until there's only one left.

That's what happens nearly always in a pelican's nest.

It seems rather inefficient, not to say heartless, that the pelican should always lay three eggs.

But it's partly an insurance policy -

if something happens to one or two of the chicks, there's always a third left to carry on.

And it's partly because very rarely, when the fishing's very good, it IS possible to raise more than one.

So, bringing up the young is a very demanding business indeed.

For most birds, it requires the full-time labour of both male and female.

But one or two birds manage to avoid it altogether.

One of them is a regular visitor to this reed bed in England.

A cuckoo, and she's raiding a reed warbler's nest.

That's one of the reed warbler's eggs gone.

And while she holds a second in her beak,

shuddering with the effort, she lays one of her own.

A near perfect match - the cuckoo's is the front one.

The reed warblers don't notice the difference and continue incubation.

The cuckoo has timed her action with care.

She laid her egg immediately after the female reed warbler laid the last of hers,

but it develops much faster and will hatch three or four days before the legitimate eggs do.

The young cuckoo, blind and naked,

now deals with the remaining warbler eggs.

Two weeks later, the monstrous young cuckoo is so big that it can no longer fit inside the tiny nest.

Its brilliantly-coloured gape,

together with its call that mimics the sound of a whole brood of warbler chicks,

constitute a demand for food that the warblers find irresistible. LONG, SHIVERING TRILL

The European cuckoo's habit is so famous

that we tend to think it's the only bird to behave in this way.

But there are birds in half a dozen other families that do so as well.

Here in Argentina, brown-hooded gulls are nesting.

Gulls are so vigorous and enterprising

that they might seem the last birds likely to be tricked...

but, on occasion, they are.

A duckling!

Its true parents,

cuckoo ducks, are far away from the nest where they dumped their egg.

Their offspring will never see them, just as they never saw their parents.

The duckling cannot know that it's quite different from the baby gull

which has now hatched out alongside it.

Nonetheless, something tells it

that it must not stay with this other nestling.

On its very first evening,

it leaves.

Unlike the cuckoo, it makes no further demands on the bird that incubated it.

Even though it's only a few hours old,

it's perfectly capable of fending for itself.

Young goldeneyes also have a somewhat precipitate start to life.

The female goldeneye often lays in a woodpecker's hole.

But when her young have got over that handicap, she leads them down to water -

the only place where they, like most ducklings,

can gather food for themselves.

Here in British Columbia there's no shortage of lakes,

and their mother goes ahead and calls for them to join her.

RAPID QUACKING

EXCITED CHIRPING

This lake, however, has already been claimed by another female goldeneye with her brood,

and she is very possessive.

There's going to be trouble.

The newcomer...

has to leave.

But her ducklings can't fly away with her.

So, they join the resident family.

That's no problem for mother - they can fend for themselves.

And an enlarged family reduces the chances of her own ducklings

being taken by a hungry fish or a hawk.

In the end, she may accumulate a flock of 20 or more.

A river in the high Andes.

Unlikely though it may seem,

some ducks manage to live on these racing waters as well -

torrent ducks.

SHRILL WHISTLE These have made their nest

in the rocks 30 feet above the water -

high enough to be safe if the river were suddenly to rise.

But that means that these ducklings also have a very hazardous journey to make.

Even mother has a little trouble.

DUCKLINGS CHIRP

The racing water might seem to pose even more problems than the rocks,

but the ducklings are so buoyant that they float on the surface

and are in no danger of drowning. Nor are they swept away,

for, miraculously, they know instinctively how to shelter in the eddies in the lee of a boulder.

And once launched, they too can feed for themselves.

Summer on the Arctic tundra.

Brent geese came up here a few weeks ago to feed on the newly-spouting vegetation

and to nest.

Their newly-hatched offspring also have to face a dangerous journey before they can feed.

This pair built their nest within a few yards of a snowy owl's nest.

That was good sense, for ground-nesting birds here are likely to be attacked by foxes.

Owls are quite prepared to tackle foxes...

..and so they seldom venture near.

While incubating, the geese benefited greatly

by nesting beside such powerful neighbours.

But now the eggs are hatching, which changes things.

Owls feed on lemmings...

..and lemmings are about the same size as goslings.

Somehow these little creatures

will have to avoid becoming one more meal for a hungry owl.

But they must leave their nest if they are not to starve.

Their parents are well aware of the danger.

Equally, the male owl can see that there's a meal to be had.

CLUCKING AND CACKLING

Parental bravery wins the day.

Two birds to guard the young are good,

three are even better.

Magpie geese live in Northern Australia.

The journey their goslings must make in order to feed is also dangerous.

Magpie males are very unusual in that they'll normally mate with two females

who will both lay in the same nest.

So it's usually three adults, and only occasionally two, that escort their young.

In the skies above, a sea eagle.

It spots a trio with chicks...

..and they manage to see it off.

A pair are an easier target.

Angry and brave the two adults may be, but it's too late.

Attacks can come not only from the sky,

but, more unexpectedly, from below.

Crocodiles.

Even the adults themselves are now in real danger and the goslings are very vulnerable indeed.

The pair have made it,

but only two of their five young have survived.

The trios have succeeded in bringing down four or five chicks.

Here in the feeding swamps there's comparative safety. All can join in keeping eagles away,

and the water is too shallow for crocodiles.

Nonetheless, overall, the journey cost many young lives.

But the families that lost least were the trios.

There really is safety in numbers.

AIR IS FILLED WITH BIRD CALL

And here, in the Seychelles, numbers are astronomical -

a million sooty terns.

Here, surely, there must be safety from predators.

But egrets stand around the fringes of the colony

and will swiftly seize a chick if it's left unguarded.

EGRET CAWS

A chick is such a good meal

that the egrets will risk stabs from the beak of a parent to get one.

Further into the colony,

the chicks are surrounded by a great crowd of adults and are much safer.

Even a few yards from the edge,

the egrets face such determined and effective opposition from all directions

that they stand little chance of success.

LOUD CACKLING ALL AROUND

Chicks that have the luck to hatch in the very centre

are five times more likely to survive than those on the edge.

And there's another way for a bird to protect its chicks.

Rear them in a place so remote that few other creatures can get there to threaten them.

A place like the Australian desert.

Here banded stilts nested beside a temporary lake. Soon after their eggs hatched,

the females left and started nesting again elsewhere.

Now the youngsters have gathered together in groups several hundred strong,

with just a few males left behind to keep an eye on them. The job isn't too difficult,

for the salty waters are full of tiny shrimps that the young stilts can collect for themselves.

For other birds, however,

finding food is so difficult that even two parents

can't feed their chicks unaided.

Farther south in Australia, white-winged choughs have that problem.

Their young feed on beetle grubs and those are so difficult to excavate

that a pair will need at least two adult helpers to keep one chick fully fed.

The more helpers they have, the more chicks they can raise.

This chick is almost fully grown and so has a very big appetite.

All four birds labour away to keep it supplied.

Eventually, however, it'll change from being a liability into an asset -

a young bird that can help rear a chick next year.

Another group of choughs appears in the trees.

It has many more members.

The residents are worried

and show their agitation by goggling their eyes.

This is a press gang. They're kidnappers.

And this is what they're after.

One of the raiders starts to display to the chick, trying to entice it away from its parental group.

And it follows.

A kidnapping has been achieved.

The raiders feed their new recruit

and it joins the group's own youngster.

Now they have two juveniles. Next year's support team will be so big

that they may be able to raise three or even four chicks.

So having difficulties raising baby can lead to sociability among adults.

But perhaps the most sociable of all birds, birds that behave almost like a troupe of little monkeys,

live here in the deserts of the Middle East.

An Arabian babbler - but you rarely see just one.

Arabian babblers do everything together, if they possibly can.

And that certainly includes taking a bath.

After a bath, the whole group sunbathe together.

Once dry, they preen each other.

In fact, Arabian babblers do most things as a group.

They all share the labour of collecting food for the group's chicks.

They also share the responsibilities for defence, taking it in turn to act as sentry.

When another sentry comes on duty,

it brings a morsel of food as part of the hand-over ritual.

A viper.

The sentry sounds the alarm.

CHIRPING The whole group assembles.

Their commotion ensures that everyone is aware of the danger.

They also discomfort the snake and perhaps distract it from hunting.

RAPID CHIRPING

It may also be that some of them,

by deliberately taunting the snake at close quarters,

are demonstrating their strength and fitness

in a way that will give them respect and seniority within the group.

Once the danger is past, life returns to normal.

The sentry goes back to guard duties...

and the youngsters start to play among themselves.

Many young birds are abandoned by their parents almost as soon as they can fly,

so they have little chance to play and gain the skills they'll need as adults.

But the babblers form such a coherent group

that the juveniles can spend time doing just that.

For the young anhingha in Florida, learning through play is essential.

If it doesn't become a skilled juggler quickly, it will starve.

It must learn to do this.

Of course, when playing with a stick, you mustn't take the game too far!

Gannets also fish by diving -

a skill that can't be practised by the young until they can fly.

The parents deal with this problem

by feeding their young so generously that by the time they've fledged into their dark, immature plumage,

they've accumulated reserves of fat that will sustain them while they learn to catch fish for themselves.

So now they're heavier than their parents.

But extra weight is a liability. It makes it more difficult for the young to fly.

The seas beside this South African colony are dangerous,

and not only because of the pounding surf.

Had there been cliffs from which to launch themselves into the air,

as there are around many gannet colonies, learning would be easier.

But there aren't. No wonder they appear nervous about taking off.

Fur seals are waiting.

But in spite of the seals,

many young gannets do manage to get into the air.

Flight for young birds is the essential skill.

Failure can be fatal, so birds do all they can to prepare for it.

The young open-billed storks, now fully grown,

are strengthening their flight muscles with regular exercises.

A young hummingbird cautiously practises hovering

while still in the nest,

even though it makes life somewhat difficult for its sibling!

On the tundra, the snowy owl chick,

still semi-clothed in down, has got plenty of room for practice.

And the surviving brown pelican

at last leaves its platform nest.

It joins other youngsters sitting at the edge of the sea.

Each has already survived many perils in its young life.

As a chick, it fought battles with its brothers and sisters and won.

For nine or ten weeks, it was fed and protected by its parents.

But now it's on its own.

If it, in its turn, is to raise young,

it has many more battles ahead of it out there on the sea and in the air.

Life for all birds everywhere can be hard,

but some species have become specially adapted to the harshest environments on earth.

How they do so, you can see in the next programme,

the last in this series about the life of birds.

Subtitles by Lois Brooks BBC Scotland 1998