White-browed Babblers do not need to drink as much as some other birds as they feed on moist foods like invertebrates, mainly insects; also seeds and fruit. They have however visited all our ponds and visited every month, to two of the ponds. We have seen a maximum number of 7 on video at once.
Most footage is from our pond in the Curlew protection area which is protected from kangaroo grazing. It has high quality under-story with many large open areas and a good cover of native grasses.
The video starts 28/7/2019 with a Wing-fluttering Display by one bird which has with a feather in its beak. There is other 2019 footage, then at the 5 minute mark (from 27/7/2017) male and female perch side by side and face in the same direction, after female fluttered wings and gave bubbling chatter. Then she adopted a rigid posture with tail raised, male mounted her twice but did not mate. Bird mating is very short. These Wing-fluttering Displays often occur in late August to early Sept. Also, in other circumstances, including by young towards parents. During first 9 months the frequency of Wing-fluttering towards parents and begging for food gradually decreases.
Paired birds are usually seen close together at all times of the year and often forage close to each other.
People sometimes think they have lots of the larger Grey-crowned Babblers when in fact they have mostly White-browed Babblers. The two can be easily confused if you are not an expert or do not have binoculars at the time. They both move quickly with lots of noise and look similar from the back as they fly away. The white brow is more pronounced with the Grey-crowned Babbler and you can compare the two by looking at this compilation and our recent one: • We Built a Pond for Gr...
Like the larger Grey-crowned Babbler, the White-browed Babbler engages in a frantic incessant flurry of behaviour, it is, if anything, more active. John Gould commented that “it moves about in small troops of from six to ten in number, and is without exception the most restless, noisy, querulous bird I ever observed. Where they occur together, the White-browed Babbler often prefers drier, stonier sites although the habitat preference of both species tend to vary from place to place.
Gould observed that “When the troop are ascending the branches, they usually do it in a line and they have a habit of suddenly assembling in a cluster, spreading their tails and wings, and puffing out their plumage until they resemble a great ball of feathers.” This behaviour is now known to be a territorial display and is referred to as ‘huddling’.
Found in large tracts of open eucalypt forest and woodland, especially with dense thickets of wattles, cassinia and other shrubby under-storey. The White-browed Babbler is highly sociable and is seen in small family groups of mostly 4 - 8 birds. They are sedentary and maintain permanent territories.
White-browed Babblers forage on the ground among leaf-litter, fallen timber or low trunks and branches, gleaning insects, tossing leaf-litter and probing crevices in wood. They move with bouncing hops; comical and playful. Members of a group communicate with quiet chuckles. The group unites when disturbed, bounding rapidly away or flying in single file into a nearby dense tree or shrub, where the often make agitated calls and clamber about frantically.
They usually forage and move in groups of up to 15 birds. In Chiltern Box-Ironbark NP they foraged in groups of 2 to 19 birds. Outside breeding season, feeding flocks are often larger than in breeding season as groups may forage together. They mainly forage on the ground and less often in vegetation.
Nestlings and fledglings are fed by both parents and by other members of co-operatively breeding groups, the role of helpers varies between studies. The nature of bonds is not known, but they appear to breed in at least socially monogamous pairs, even within co-operatively breeding groups. In the Chiltern Box-Ironbark NP paired birds were almost always seen together and often foraged close to each other. Probable mate-guarding was also observed, with dominant males escorting females to and from nest in early stages of nesting and suggested that males attempt to monopolize the breeding female.
White-browed Babblers build a bulky domed twig nest which is used for both roosting and breeding. Brood nests are a little smaller than roost nests.
In quite a small area one often finds many nests, but perhaps only one out of 8 or 9 will be used. In one study auxiliaries did not build brood-nests, though they did help maintain them and they also fed incubating female, mostly when she was off the nest; main contribution was feeding nestlings and defense of nests and fledglings. Members of groups forage, preen, dust-bathe and roost together.
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