#dunnock

AKA hedge accentor, hedge sparrow, hedge warbler, shufflewing and titling.

Originally described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758 as Motacilla modularis, and moved to Prunella by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot in 1816. Prunella comes from the German braunelle, meaning 'little brown', which is what dunnock means as well, making them the original Little Brown Job, headaches for birdwatchers everywhere. Modularis, accentor, and warbler all refer to their singing.

Largely insectivorous birds native to Europe and SW Asia, and the only accentor that lives in temperate lowlands - the rest prefer mountain habitats or Siberia. There were deliberately introduced to NZ between 1865 and 1896, because some people are fucking stupid, and have since spread to islands even more remote.

Breeding behaviour is quite complex - they may be monogamous pairs, polyandrous thruples, or rarely polygynoandrous foursomes. Which arrangement is preferred appears to depend on food availability - abundant food supplies leads to smaller territories and a higher likelihood of monogamy. During the breeding season, females actively and profusely solicit copulation - up to 100 times a day - with both their longterm partners and any other males that enter the territory. The female raises her tail and waggles it, and the male pecks at her cloaca for up to a minute before mating, to make her eject the sperm of whoever she mated with earlier. The actual mating takes a fraction of a second.

The nest - twigs and moss and lined with soft materials such as wool or feathers - is built by the female alone, usually in the interior of dense bushes and shrubs. She'll incubate the bright turquoise eggs, but receive some incubation feeding by males. Females always feed the nestlings, with males providing paternal care in proportion to how much access they had to her during the mating period. After fledging, the males put more effort into parental care, while females prepare to re-nest (usually once or twice more per season).