Lustful, too!
East of the Nullarbor Plain, when an Australian talks of “blue wrens”, chances are they are Superb Fairy-wrens, Malurus cyaneus.
Superb Fairy-wrens do not exist on the WA side of the Nullarbor.
There – at least in WA’s southern half – the (equally superb) blue wren in question is usually the Splendid Fairy-wren, Malurus splendens.
Introduced predators (cats, most especially) and loss of habitat have had a profoundly negative impact on Australia’s blue wrens.
In the Australia of my childhood, Australian humans often saw blue wrens.
Now, for most of us, such sightings are rare events; many city-dwellers have never witnessed wrens’ courtship behaviour.
Happily, however, Walpole is a place of very few cats…and many, unusually-confident wrens.
(for tips on photographing small, highly active birds, see earlier post. It and this one are both fruit of time spent within just a few metres of a house in Walpole)
Discover more about this species here.
In wren-world things happen very quickly.
Photographically speaking, they are very challenging – never still, unpredictable.
Consider yourself lucky if you manage to capture one wren, properly lit, in focus, and still entirely within “frame”.
Consider buying lottery tickets when/if you manage to capture a continuous sequence of courtship behaviour, involving two birds.
The first three photos below were taken within rather less than one single second.
The final two images were taken within the next second or two; I missed the moment when the female devoured the male’s six-legged gift to her.
I suggest you enlarge image and zoom in on “the action”.
