Some years ago I posted a tale on the chatline about some italian fishermen
brought to court by Dave Lindner, then a ranger. David now lives at a place
called the Buffalo Park in Kakadu. Dave said they gave him a brace of
whistling-ducks saying they preferred to eat other birds. He discovered
what those other birds were when he accepted their invitation to dinner and
while eating his bolognaise found tiny bones. The fishermen were netting
songbirds to eat. One species they'd apparently eaten on occasion was
Yellow Chat.
I also remember John McKean telling us about eating native birds in Kakadu
though I can't remember him specifying songbirds.
Jon Franzen has written an exposé of the trapping of songbirds in Cyprus
(The New Yorker, July 26, 2010). I think it's one of his best.
Denise Lawungkurr Goodfellow
PO Box 71, Darwin River,
NT 0841
043 8650 835
On 30/1/14 11:40 AM, "Philip Veerman" <> wrote:
> I saw the same thing in Yunnan province in China in 2009, advertised as
> sparrows. What I looked at (only briefly) all seemed homogenous in size and
> may have originally been sparrows (Tree Sparrows are common so I assume
> likely that they would target common birds) but possibly other things as
> well. This is surely not unusual. Whilst it is not nice, it is not
> fundamentally worse than eating fish or whatever else.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Birding-Aus On Behalf Of
> Carl Clifford
> Sent: Thursday, 30 January 2014 11:32 AM
> To: <>
> Subject: [Birding-Aus] An interesting item on the menu
>
>
> I have just spent a week in Siem Reap, Cambodia. When birding one day in an
> adjoining town, I stopped for lunch at a roadside stall. One of the
> offerings on their carte de jour was "birds". I asked my driver what the
> "birds" were, and he said that they were wild birds caught in the forest and
> fields and asked the owner to show me some. Sure enough, there on a tray
> were the poor sad little plucked carcasses of birds ranging from sparrow to
> thrush size. Unfortunately, I am not much chop on identifying birds without
> plumage. I declined the offering and had the fish instead. Next day, I saw a
> restaurant in town offering "Khmer birds". I presume they were the same.
>
> I wondered why the birding was a bit slow around Siem Reap town.
>
> Carl Clifford
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