Our Buffspotted Flufftail has caused us delight, heartache, improved our social life and gave me sleepless nights since 6 January. The sleepless nights actually started long before that, it makes the most haunting hoot nonstop all night, whoooop whooooop whoooop …. and it is loud!
Lets start at the very beginning, when we moved to this house in 2007, the flufftails were calling around us and Stuart wanted to desperately attract them to our garden. We had the thickets they require and Stuart had the water dish on the ground and mealworms to entice them. Then the cat saga hit our part of the village, our birds in general declined and the flufftails disappeared. In 2013 150 cats were euthenised in a house round the corner from us. Three years later, thank goodness the flufftails were back.
Now that the bird was calling again, Stuart renewed his efforts with free food and bath facilities and on 6 January, a cool and wet day Stuart said to me at lunch time “todays the day” and he put mealworms out and water in the dish, played a recording of the flufftail and seated himself on the veranda about 5m from the clearing. Not even 2 minutes later Stuart could not
contain himself, the jolly bird appeared in the clearing and ate the mealworms. From that day on, every afternoon at about 17h30 we have had visitors on the veranda, the real birders stayed 5 minutes and disappeared, but friends and others would sit and enjoy a cup of tea or a glass of wine while watching this spectacle and quite often our dinner had to wait till 20h00, not good for our constitution. 46 locals and overseas visitors saw the flufftail that year.
Great excitement, on 23 January the male was joined by a female, she literally fell out the bush. Long discussions had taken place – what about the females? Now the nightly calling stopped and we wondered what was happening, is he building a nest? The male did make soft growling noises.
Both continued to visit every evening and took baths together.
Unbelievable!
On 29 January was the last time we saw the flufftails. We were not quite sure what they were up to, but were worried as we had a cat on our veranda two nights later. We could hear a flufftail calling in the distance. Yesterday, 8 February I decided to prune a bush in the front of the garden well away from where we thought the flufftails might be nesting. Barefoot
I am entering the Red Robin tangle hoping I won’t stand on a toad and as I am about to take my second step, an
unearthly hissing, growling, screeching starts underfoot. I froze and out shot the male flufftail. Well, now we know he is alive and they have a nest. They build a bower and both, male and female incubate for 15 days. The nest had 5 eggs, 4 hatched and 3 chicks survived.
~ written by Stuart McLean