Nature's Engineer - The Vitelline Masked Weaver

Masai Mara National Reserve

My first encounter with one of these guys was a huge surprise. I think I may have seen a few weavers’ photos somewhere but I honestly had no idea about them nor know many details. That guy wasn’t weaving much and the little that he did, well, I photographed him like I would an elephant as that’s what I was photographing before we ran into him. Needless to say, I bombed those pictures and I was so thankful to have another go when we ran into this guy a few days later as he went about his business long enough for me to score these beauties.

When we found him, he was by a stream, looking over his handiwork which consisted of I think four nests that he was building together (Pic : 1 & 2). As you can see in the photos, the nests are all swinging and he’d get blades of grass and I think use it where it fit best. Talk about multi tasking. See the way it works with these guys is that he builds and if his build passes inspection by a female, she moves in and that gives him mating rights. So building more increases his odds in a couple of ways. First, one nest may be rejected but another accepted by a female, second, they aren’t possessive and don’t care much for monogamy. 4 nests means 4 potential females simultaneously.

These guys are named after the Latin word vitellinus, which means a deep yellow colour with a red tinge. Quite fitting huh? Pretty unlike "The Laughingthrush's Joke". They are partially nomadic due to environmental reasons during the non breeding season. They breed in different months of the year in different regions of the African Savannah. They form larger flocks and forage mostly during the non breeding season and the males also loose some of their bright colours at that time. What I can’t get my head around about all weavers is how they worked out how to tie knots with their faces and to do that simultaneously on multiple projects every year. It’s quite a feat for a bird brain if you ask me.

I had to move to shutter priority for this guy after my first failure and I went all out at fastest possible shutter at 1000 iso which was more than enough on the sunny afternoon. Knowing birds better now, Ill be going faster on my next go at weavers. The thing will be that I have to engineer sighting them at engineering time though. I have to say that I was pretty damn lucky finding my guy when I did and where I did, all of which was pure chance.

There are so many animals with so many different ways of living on Earth. So many individual complexities and systems within systems. All interconnected and interdependent. The weavers are prime example how genetic programming works on us all. How these guys just know how to make these intricate engineering marvels that will hold up and last a season with repairs of course till they dry out and our guy has to start again the next season. The story of this planet is just so mind bogglingly expansive and divergent from anything else. It really is a privilege and a pity that we know only as much as we do in our little time on it. But maybe, that’s the reason why the design passes on the important information we have to the next generation in the first place. Just that itself, is brain stopping to me if I think about it.