Birds

Australia is known for the variety and often uniqueness of its birds. Almost every car trip we took we encountered birds of some kind or another. I am sticking to the ones I saw in the wild and recognized.

Emus – I thought I would not see emus in the wild. At Mudgee we saw a couple in a field on the side of the road and then again near Wagga Wagga. Emus are large flightless birds that inhabit grasslands.

Pelicans – we saw flocks of pelicans waiting around to be fed at the marina in Saint Remo near Philip Island. Australian pelicans are enormous, the second biggest in the world I was told.

Sulphur-crested Cockatoos – we saw these birds everywhere we went in Australia from the tropical north to Philip Island. They even visited us for breakfast at our downtown Sydney apartment. They can live fifty years or more and are great voice imitators. I remember one my cousin owned in Wagga Wagga that would greet visitors with drunk again Charlie!

Bell Birds – not a very impressive looking bird but what a sound. Their tinkling songs sound like bells accompanying us while hiking in the Eastern Australian rain forests. We saw and heard many in the Blue Mountains.

Red-tailed Black Cockatoos – less common than their white cockatoo cousins, these birds are also bigger. We saw many flying past our window at our house in Katoomba, Blue Mountains.

Little Penguins – formerly known as fairy penguins. Do you know why the name change? These birds frequent the waters off Philip Island spending days fishing and waddling ashore at nightfall to their nests (holes in the ground) where they socialize with their peers.

Kookaburras – also known as laughing jackasses due to the noise they make early in the morning. They often woke me up, the first sign of dawn. Kookaburras are members of the king fisher family ergo they eat fish but are also known to eat rodents and the occasional snake. Eating snakes could be life limiting as Australia boasts six of the ten most venomous snakes in the world.

Brush Turkeys – simply a black turkey with red colouring around the head that inhabits bushy areas in Eastern rain forests. They are essential to the health of rain forests as they scratch up much of the leaf litter to make their nests which can measure up to 3 metres across.

Lyrebirds – previously on the road to extinction these birds have made a remarkable recovery. Lyrebirds are great imitators and can imitate the songs and calls of many other rain forest birds. They are almost the same size as brush turkeys and have a beautiful lyre-shaped tail.

Whip birds – any guesses as to what sound these rain forest dwellers make?

Rainbow Lorikeets – spectacularly coloured birds (blue, red, green and yellow) that are quite common in Eastern Queensland. We saw hundreds of them on the Gold Coast and at Port Douglas.

Galahs – my favourite bird because pairs mate for life. Like the sulphur-crested cockatoos they range throughout Eastern Australia and just like their cousins their numbers are diminishing due to habitat loss to farming and urban sprawl. The short, sharp tweet-tweet is a distinctive sound on the Australia’s grasslands.

Rosellas (Eastern and Crimson) – these birds are common and colourful. You are sure to see them in trees near the roadside on areas around Mudgee and from Mudgee to Wagga Wagga.

King Parrots – these birds are aptly named due to their striking red and green plumage and impressive size. We saw them in the Blue Mountains.

Magpies, Pee-wees and Willy wagtails – all three birds are common and all are coloured black and white. Watch out for magpies as they are cheeky and often beg for food and will drive bomb you during the mating season. Pee-wees often joined kookaburras in my morning wake up call. Willy wagtails are much smaller birds and they do just that – they wag their tails.