What about some Red Junglefowl, Blackbirds, Spoggies, and the odd Rock
Dove / They're all nice birds.
-----Original Message-----
From:
On Behalf Of Rob Geraghty
Sent: Sunday, April 12, 2009 7:17 PM
To: ; birding-nz; Birding Aus; Gunnar Engblom
Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] 10 birds as tourism attraction
--- On Sun, 4/12/09, Gunnar Engblom <> wrote: So, why
not make an excersize? What birds would you chose in your country as
tourism attractions? A good subject for discussion anyway. Note that it
could also be certain types of congegations of birds Hi Gunnar,
Of the Australian birds I'm familiar with, my top tourist attractions
would be:
1. The Lyrebird (actually two species, the Albert and Superb). A large
bird with a spectacular display behaviour by the male, and an amazing
mimic. The most bizarre call I've personally heard a Lyrebird making was
the sound of a car alarm. Attenborough recorded a description of it;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y
2. The Satin Bowerbird. Another species with a fascinating mating
display dance, but also a skilled builder. The adult male constructs a
king of open clamshell shaped avenue bower from sticks, which he
surrounds with anything bright blue which he can get his beak on and
carry. In the wild away from humans, this may just be the flowers of
native tobacco, but near people there's usually blue plastic straws,
aerosol lids, bottle caps and so on. Scientific American published an
article which described the only known animal behaviour of stealing
non-food items. They distributed numbered pieces of blue glass amongst
bowers in an area then recorded which pieces where were over a period.
The birds stole from each other, all trying to get the best collection.
They were also observed destroying each other's bowers.
As for other birds, I think Australia has a reputation as "the land of
parrots" and it's hard to pick one or two as the best. For pretty
plumage you'd need to consider birds like the Pittas and the Gouldian
Finch. For others with unusual behaviours there's the mound builders
that incubate their eggs in mounds of compost. There's the laughing
Kookaburra with its famous call, but there's much prettier kingfishers
like the Azure Kingfisher. Even some of the rainforest pigeons are
spectacularly beautiful but seldom seen.
I got a top two but how to pick a top ten?
Rob
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