Ruminations

Darwin's Firebirds

"We get a lot of humbug [from the birds]."
"We make firebreaks, and sometimes that bird makes another fire and he makes a lot of trouble."
Robert Redford, Aboriginal Australian ranger, Darwin, Australia

"It's notable that we did not receive credible reports from casual tourists or others who might have simply gotten lucky [observing a natural phenomenon]."
"It appears that one needs to have spent a lot of time in the bush, and a fair amount of it close to wildfires."
"I'm glad that others are now talking about co-evolution and learning from birds. Fire may not be so uniquely human after all."
Mark Bonta, assistant professor, earth sciences, Pennsylvania State University, Altoona, PA.

Australian Savanna when aflame. and not Images: (left) Thomas Schoch (right) Bidgee

Aboriginal people are known to have used fire for millennia, as a land management device; burning arable fields to restore critical minerals, instead of allowing the land to lie fallow. The device results in more fertile fields for agricultural restoration. Thanks to the knowledge and management of carefully controlled burns, Aboriginal populations importantly shaped critical forest infrastructure and savannas in the interests of improved hunting and for arable purposes.

Aboriginal peoples have intimate knowledge of the bush that surrounds them. And they know that some birds deliberately spread fires; a certainty of knowledge they share with other indigenous groups elsewhere, according to Dr. Bonta. His research team that includes ornithologist Bob Gosford also of PSU in Altoona have plans for an expedition in May to work with Aboriginal fire rangers hoping they will be able to document that very bird-setting-fire behaviour.

Black kites (Milvus migrans) circle near a roadway during a fire on the Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, Australia. Dick Eussen

According to locals around Darwin, firehawks represented by flocks of black kites, whistling kites and brown falcons hunting near bushfires snap up small animals that smoke and sparks from bushfires flush out. When a fire begins to diminish in strength and flicker out, according to the locals, some birds will ensure the fires keep going by picking up fire-lit sticks and flying with them to new locations with the purpose in mind of setting new fires.

In scientific circles there is a great deal of skepticism that birds can conceive of manipulating fire. A paper published recently in the Journal of Ethnobiology gathered reports of an anecdotal nature -- though the hope is that some photographs of birds flying with fiery sticks to a geographical goal will be achieved -- that all three of those bird species have developed avian expertise in spreading wildfires to satisfy their hunting needs.

The black kite has been seen on numerous occasions to deliberately drop burning sticks into grasslands. sompreaw/Shutterstock

Drs. Bob Gosford and Mark Bonta and colleagues documented ethnographic reports and conducted interviews with eyewitnesses, including Aboriginal firefighters and academics, who described raptors stealing burning twigs from cook fires to transport the burning brands up to a kilometer in distance. One firefighter saw a flock of birds spread a wildfire all the way up a small valley. And all of the accounts seem to suggest the birds act for the most part when wildfires are about to wane.

According to Steve Debus, adjunct lecturer at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, black kites have a particular reputation for cleverness, known to appropriate food from schoolyards "even from children's hands, and use bread scraps at picnic areas to bait fish within capture range". Dr. Bonta believes that fire-spreading technique is reserved to especially precocious birds, that not all birds in a flock are aware of the technique.

There is a legend among Aboriginals that these clever birds, capable of manipulating fire to their advantage were in fact the first animals ever to do so. That it was their activities that alerted humankind to the possibilities inherent in the usefulness and management of fire.