Hi Niven
We had this conversation several years ago and I cannot remember whether
Dave told me the fishermen admitted to catching Yellow Chat. It seems
improbable to me that they would know the name of the bird. They may have
just described their catch to him. Or then again maybe they gave him
feathers. Dave said something to the effect that he had seen, or had
possession of, some feathers when the case went to court. From what Dave
told me that seems plausible. They seemed quite open about what they were
doing eg serving him songbirds for dinner!
Denise
On 30/1/14 3:24 PM, "Niven" <> wrote:
> I seem to remember the Yellow Chat conversation from some time ago, but it
> didn't have any source for the claim. Is it that Dave Lindner identified
> the Yellow Chat from the 'tiny bones', did they admit to him that they were
> catching Yellow Chats or did the ID come from another source?
> I'd wonder where they were netting to catch Yellow Chat. Unless they were
> specifically after them, which seems a bit unlikely, then to put up nets in
> habitat where they'd catch them would make it unlikely that they'd catch
> much else. From a logical point of view they'd put up their nets where
> there was a bit of bird activity rather than out on the South Alligator
> floodplain for instance.
> Niven
>
>
> On 30 January 2014 13:49, Denise Goodfellow <>wrote:
>
>> 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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>>
>>
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