Birds and Bamboo (1 Viewer)

[Mike D]

I have been working in West Africa for a couple of years now and realised only during the last trip that, although we have a large stand of bamboo just outside the office, there are no signs of any birds' nests.
The canes have a trunk diameter of about 5 inches (120mm), and are around 40 feet in height so are quite substantial plants.

White-fronted Bee-eaters and mousebirds (among many) use them as perches as well as singing posts.

So my question is this - do any birds make nests actually on the canes, not down among the the leaf-litter at their bases? If not. any theories as to why not (stems too slippery, too much lateral movement???)? Seems like an environment looking for a guest.

 

[Jos Stratford]

Not eally answering your question, but I remember one time when I went off through the bamboo forests on Mount Kenya - 'cos it was so thick, we walked along the Buffalo trails (literally tunnels through the bamboo) - don't remember any birds, nesting or otherwise, but do remember we suddenly heard buffalo charging down the hillside towards us! Realising the bamboo was too thick to move out of the tunnel, we prepared for a rather ugly confrontation when some massive none-too-friendly hulk found us straight in his path! Luck would have it, they was another tunnel adjacent to us which we hadn't seen - and luckier still, the Buffalo were on that trail

Sorry to divert your thread, but nice story I think

 

[Nina P]

I have never heard of any birds using them to nest in, but I did think that as Bamboo is food for pandas then what bird in it's right mind would get in the way of one of them whilst eating. My dear old dad also wondered why nothing nested in them and he spent some time in Singapore where they were common native plants but never saw anything nest but just perch and sing.
IN my garden the birds (mainly Tits) cling on for grim death and often slide down the stems, I would think it near impossible to get a nest to stay in place, especially as they are so mobile.

 

[Rasmus Boegh]

In South America there are several extreme bamboo-specialists (especially in families Furnariidae, Thamnophilidae & Tyrannidae) that are never seen away from the dense bamboo-thickets. They are likely to nest inside the bamboo-thickets, but the problem is that many of these species are very hard to study and in reality we don't know their nesting-details...

 

[Edward woodwood]

Hi Rasmus

yes, many of the bamboo specialists are hard enough to see, never mind study.

I remember White-cheeked Tody-tyrant as one of the hardest birds to pick up and follow I've ever encountered, so small and lively are they.... or maybe i'm just a bit useless!

 

[Rasmus Boegh]

By coincidence I noticed the following when going through the highly recommendable Handbook of the Birds of the World vol. 8:

Dusky-cheeked Foliage-gleaner (Anabazenops dorsalis):
"...One nest was a cup 15 cm deep of fine dried material, placed c. 3 m above ground in a natural cavity of dead bamboo stem c. 7 cm in diameter..."

Bertoni's Antbird (Drymophila rubricollis):
"...Single known nest was a pendant cup/bag situated in fork of two intersecting thin stems of bamboo (Merostacchys), concealed on all sides and above by bamboo leaves..."

Dusky-tailed Antbird (Drymophila malura):
"...A nearly completed nest almost certainly of this species (the pair not actually seen on the nest) found in Sept in Brazil (Minas Gerais): an open cup measuring 8 x 6.5 cm, height 10.5 cm, made of dead bamboo leaves interwoven with green moss, seed stems and spider webs, supported between horizontal branches of bamboo 98 cm up in bamboo scrub 2-3 m tall..."