page_title: Brolga
section_title: Mating and breeding
hierarchical_section_title: Brolga / Ecology and behaviour / Mating and breeding
caption_attribution_description: Brolgas (Grus rubicunda) in Healesville Animal Sanctuary, near Melbourne, Australia.
context_page_description: The brolga, formerly known as the native companion, is a bird in the crane family. It has also been given the name Australian crane, a term coined in 1865 by well-known ornithologist John Gould in his Birds of Australia.
  The brolga is a common, gregarious wetland bird species of tropical and south-eastern Australia and New Guinea. It is a tall, upright bird with a small head, long beak, slender neck, and long legs. Its plumage is mainly grey, with black wing tips, and it has an orange-red band of colour on its head. The brolga's courting dance is similar to that of other cranes, and is well recognized by Australians. The nest is built of wetland vegetation, either on an elevated piece of land, or floating on shallow water in marshland, and usually two eggs are laid. Incubation takes 32 days and the newly hatched young are precocial. The adult diet is omnivorous and includes plant matter, invertebrates, and small vertebrates.
  Although the bird is not considered endangered over the majority of its range, populations are showing some decline, especially in southern Australia, and local action plans are being undertaken in some areas.
context_section_description: Brolgas are monogamous and usually bond for life, though new pairings may follow a death of one individual. A feature of a bonded couple is the synchronous calling, which the female usually initiates. She stands with her wings folded and beak pointed to the sky and emits a series of trumpeting calls. The male stands alongside in a similar posture, but with his wings flared and primaries drooping, which is the only time when sex can be differentiated reliably. The male emits one longer call for every two emitted by the female.
  Brolgas are well known for their ritualised, intricate mating dances. The performance begins with a bird picking up some grass and tossing it into the air before catching it in its bill. The bird then jumps a metre (yard) into the air with outstretched wings and continues by stretching its neck, bowing, strutting around, calling, and bobbing its head up and down. Sometimes, just one brolga dances for its mate; often they dance in pairs; and sometimes a whole group of about a dozen dance together, lining up roughly opposite each other before they start.
  The brolga breeds throughout its range in Australia and New Guinea. The start of the breeding season is largely determined by rainfall rather than the time of year; thus, the season is February to May after the rainy season in the monsoonal areas, and September to December in southern Australia. It is unclear whether all breeding pairs leave breeding territories to join flocks during the dry season or return the subsequent breeding season, and this behavior may vary with location. In food-rich habitats, nests can be quite close together, and in Queensland, are found in the same area as those of the sarus crane. The nest, which is built by both sexes, is a raised mound of uprooted grass, and other plant material sited on a small island in shallow water, or occasionally floating. Sometimes, the birds make hardly any nest, take over a disused swan nest, or simply lay on bare ground. Nests were initiated between November and February in the Gilbert and Flinders River basins, and tracked rainfall episodes in each river basin.
  A single brood is produced per year. The clutch size is usually two, but occasionally one or three eggs are laid about two days apart. The dull white eggs are sparsely spotted or blotched with reddish brown, with the markings being denser at the larger end of the egg. They measure 95 by 61 mm (3.7 by 2.4 in), though larger eggs were found in a clutch of three eggs. Both sexes incubate the eggs, with the female sitting on the nest at night. Hatching is not synchronised, and occurs after about 32 days of incubation. The newly hatched chicks are covered with grey down and weigh about 100 g (3.5 oz). They are precocial and are able to leave the nest within a day or two. Both parents feed and guard the young. The chicks fledge within 4–5 weeks, are fully feathered within 3 months, and are able to fly about 2 weeks later. When threatened, they hide and stay quiet, while the parents perform a broken-wing display to distract the predator. The adults continue to protect the young for up to 11 months, or for nearly 2 years if they do not breed again in the interim. Breeding pairs maintain discrete territories within which they raise chicks. Territory sizes in Victoria, south-eastern Australia, ranged between 70 and 523 hectares, and each crane territory had a mix of farmland and wetlands. Families roosted in wetlands at night, and moved an average distance of 442 m to and from these night roosts. Each family used multiple wetlands within their territories, either switching between them, or using wetlands sequentially. Breeding success of territorial pairs (estimated as percentage of pairs that successfully fledged at least one chick) was 59% in the Gilbert River basin and 46% in the Flinders River basin (using a total of 80 pairs located on territories), with 33% of all successful pairs fledging two chicks each.
caption: Pair at nest at Healesville Sanctuary near Melbourne
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot A70", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "QuickTime 7.0.4", "Image DateTime": "2006:02:12 18:19:11", "Image HostComputer": "Mac OS X 10.3.9", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "252", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1678", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6391", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/80", "EXIF FNumber": "9/2", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2005:12:23 13:29:13", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2005:12:23 13:29:13", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "101/16", "EXIF ApertureValue": "139/32", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "139/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "215/16", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1536", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1656", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "128000/13", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "128000/13", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}