A List of Birds (aka Playing with the Merlin App in Australia)

Did you know that Australia has more than a dozen types of pigeon?  This seems highly unnecessary, but also delightful.  

Rock Pigeon

White-headed Pigeon

Crested Pigeon

Spinifex Pigeon

Squatter Pigeon

Chestnut-quilled Rock-Pigeon

White-quilled Rock-Pigeon

Wonga Pigeon

Christmas Island Imperial-Pigeon

Torresian Imperial-Pigeon

Topknot Pigeon

Aaaaand there's even the Common Bronzewing, which is a gorgeous rainbow bird who is a pigeon in family but for some reason not in name?

Bronzewing photograph care of Leo/0ystercatcher on Flickr.

Australian animals are in a whole other level of striking.  I got to see some wild koalas sitting in trees at the roadside, and some "wild" grey kangaroos grazing on a golf course, but I was most struck by the incredible variety and incredible onomatopoeia naming conventions of the birdlife.  Yes, Australian marsupials rule, but have you heard of these bad birds?

There isn't just a Beach Thick-knee but also a Bush Thick-knee.  The cassowary.  THE cassowary.  Orange-footed Megapode.  To say nothing of the various Frogmouths (Tawny, Marbled, and Papuan).  I have to add at least some of their photos, care of the Merlin app.  These darlings!

Australia has a whole class of birds who seem to have been exclusively made up by my Dad.

    The Melbourne art museum looks out on an open square with a cafe, and the day I was enjoying my coffee there a stage being slowly dismantled from a show the night before.  People in business dress and tourists mingled during the lunch hour.  It would have been the perfect place for flocks of pigeons to congregate, fighting for crusts of bread.  But, this being Melbourne and Australia being extra instead there were flocks of sulphur-crested cockatoos, dozens of hoarsely screeching parrots hopping noisily through the sycamore canopy and then suddenly bursting up into the sky or to swoop the cafe tables, chasing each other in some kind of endless game.

The middle bird is the maned duck, which makes a sound like a raspy cartoon villain laugh.

I took a bus trip along the Great Ocean Road and was much more excited about the birds than about the history of surfing.  Some type of currowong (pied, grey, black?) making croaking quacks at me from the powerlines! Red wattlebirds flitting in and out of a honey myrtle tree living up to their honeyeater title by chowing down on the nectar from the tree's strange red bottlebrush flowers!  Little corellas casually eating grass seed next to a busy road!

The Bell Miner that sounded like an institutional grade fire alarm and I was able to ID with some choice search-term-fu and found a forum entry reading:

I heard loud 'beeping' or 'whistle' type of noise from a kind of small birds in Royal Botanic Garden, Melbourne. They hang around in the big trees by the swamp/lake. Their chest is mustard colour and the bead is orange. They also chirping like normal birds but when they make this 'beeping' noise, it's really loud, is almost like an electronic sound. Anyone can tell me what this bird is?

Australia was good for birds, boy howdy.

Photo credit Ross Tsai, Flickr.