September. October 37T
HE WORLD’S SECOND-HEAVIEST bird remains
shrouded in mystery. Living in the shadowy
world of northern Queensland’s ancient rain-
forests, the southern cassowary still sometimes
surprises scientists and wildlife carers with
unusual and rarely documented behaviours.
For example, there’s the question of diet. Although
cassowaries mostly eat fruits and seeds, they occasionally
add a little protein from fish, crustaceans and even road-
kill, says Wren McLean, an ecologist and conservation
scientist with the Rainforest Trust in Mullumbimby, north-
ern New South Wales. “They are known to go fishing by
lowering themselves into a freshwater pool and opening
up their feathers. They allow the small fish to come in
and eat their dead skin cells,” says Wren, whose cassowary
survey work has been supported by the AG Society. “Then
they close their feathers, step out of the water, shake
themselves and pick up the little fish.”
Dr David Westcott, a CSIRO zoologist based in Atherton,
Queensland, who has studied cassowaries for many years,
agrees “the different strategies they use to get a balanced and
non-poisonous diet are interesting”. Being almost entirely
frugivorous (fruit-eating) can be difficult, because many
basic nutrients are poorly represented, so cassowaries “have
to really be quite clever”, he says. To this end, cassowaries
have been seen eating road-killed bandicoots, while the
remains of crabs and even small birds have been found in
cassowary faeces.
Ingrid Marker, a long-time wildlife carer at the Garners
Beach Cassowary Rehabilitation Centre, run by Rainforest
Reserves Australia, has been in almost daily contact with
cassowaries for about three decades and has also seen several
unusual behaviours. On one occasion, she saw a chick make
a vocalisation that she believes indicated a hawk in the sky
above. “The male looked up and then puf fed h imself up l ike
a pufferfish, and the chicks ran underneath him, and they
walked back into the canopy,” Ingrid says, adding that cas-
sowaries have a series of different calls for different threats.Australian Geographic
Society Supported