Battle for Booderee

The Fairy-Wrens are some of Australia's most beautiful creatures. They're also some of the most socially interesting birds out there. Fairy-Wrens are cooperative breeders, with several promiscuous pairs of adults helping raise each other's offspring. While they're capable as a group of fending off predator birds from their territory, between each other they're more of a "make love not war" sort of bird.

Which is why the heated territory battle over the flower-bearing bushes of Booderee National Park Botanical Gardens was so unusual. In a frenzy of fast-flying feathers, the males dove between bushes, singing loudly and flashing their reflective faces. The diminutive brown females were no less engaged, calling out with tails arched high. Repeatedly they circled the area, each group vying for dominance with the most spectacular displays they could summon.

This is one of those places where the range of the Superb Fairy-Wren (left) and the Variegated Fairy-Wren (right) overlap. It seems that in these usually free-loving families, speciation has made distant cousins unwelcome. For the moment, at least, the Superb's seem to have triumphed. As we were leaving one pair had already resumed their usual pastime, squeaking loudly within the bushes.

Birdlist from Booderee Gardens and the Sapphire Coast