The Science of Birds - From the Field: Australia

Episode Date: August 8, 2026

👕 Bird Merch —  Get yourself some bird shirts!~~~In this "from the field" episode of The Science of Birds, Ivan Phillipsen takes you on a journey through some iconic landscapes in Australia. Fulfilling a childhood fascination with the Outback, Ivan splits his two-week adventure between the arid, rust-red deserts of the Northern Territory's Red Centre and the lush, ancient tropical rainforests of Queensland.Along the way, he shares the excitement of racking up some "lifers" while encountering some of Australia’s unique avian families. From colorful, charismatic parrots and adorable finches to highly sought-after, elusive rainforest dwellers, Ivan details the thrill of tracking down endemic species and observing fascinating bird behaviors in the wild. Beyond the incredible birding, he also sets out to find a few of Australia's most iconic and unusual mammals.Tune in to hear all about the rewarding highs of birding in the land down under, and get a sneak peek at an exciting future birding expedition he is scouting for 2028!Link to this episode on the Science of Birds websiteSupport the show

Good day and welcome. This is the Science of Birds. I am your host, Ivan Philipson. The Science of Birds podcast is a lighthearted exploration of bird biology for lifelong learners. This is episode 136. It's an unscripted from the field episode, all about my recent experiences traveling and birding here in Australia. This is my third visit to the land down under that,

first two were to lead tours, birding and nature tours. And it was about 10 years ago that I first visited Australia. And every time it's been totally magical, I always wanted to go to Australia since I was a kid and Australia definitely has delivered. It has become pretty much my all-time favorite destination as far as major regions go. Now, why am I here? Well, the reason is that it's twofold. One is I'm, I did some scouting in one part of Australia for a future birding tour that I'll be leading in a couple years. And then the latter part of my trip was just me having fun exploring another part of Australia that I've been to before, but I wanted to just visit again. Now, as I mentioned, I've been fascinated with Australia since I was a kid, and I can really remember where that began. I was in fourth grade in Mr. House's class, and he one day decided to give us a slideshow.

And this is an actual slideshow with actual slides. Because this is, we're talking like mid-80s. And the topic of the slideshow was Mr. House's adventure across Australia. He had a motorcycle, and he just went by himself across the outback. And I think that was maybe like in the late 70s or something. And as a little fourth grader sitting there watching this presentation, I was just utterly enthralled. I thought, wow, first of all, what a cool dude, Mr. House just tearing off across the outback by himself, and also wow, Australia, and the romance and the mystique of the outback.

And as a young little naturalist, I knew that the animals and plants of Australia were very special, very different from most of those things elsewhere in the world. So I always wanted to get there. Ten years ago, I got there for the first time, and I'm just thrilled to be back, and I can't wait till the next time I come back. And this time, unlike my last from the field episode where I was in Romania, if you listened to that one,

this time I actually have functioning binoculars. Imagine that. I have new binoculars. They are fabulous, and they really enhanced the experience. Of course. Now, as much as I tried to be Zen about, having broken binoculars last time and focusing on the different aspects of birds like their sounds more than seeing them. It has been really nice to have a good pair of binoculars.

I mean, it just makes a world of difference. Okay, so we're about to get into it. One thing I want to say is for all my Australian listeners, because I know I have quite a few of you down under. Well, if I mispronounce things, according to you, according to how you folks say things, I apologize in advance for any mispronunciations. All right, let's get into it. So this visit to Australia lasted about two weeks. I'm at the tail end of it now. And it was roughly divided between two different Australian states, the Northern Territory and Queensland.

So if you're not familiar with Australia's geography, the Northern Territory is pretty central, kind of northern central Australia, whereas Queensland is the northeast. East. Now, I'd already been to Queensland a couple times. I had been to the northern part of the Northern Territory before leading my last birding tour. But the scouting that I did on this trip was visiting the southern part of the Northern Territory, and that is known as the Red Center, spelled C-E-N-T-R-E because of the, I guess, British influence, the Red Center. And that part of Australia is a place that I've wanted to get to for a very long time. Okay, so the northern territory. The main coastal city in the north is Darwin,

and the northern northern territory is tropical. It's in the tropical latitudes. And so the ecosystems in that area are mostly tropical savannas, and they're influenced by a monsoonal climate. So there's a very wet season and a relatively dry season. And that's a great place to visit. Darwin's a cool city. There's wonderful national parks around there, especially Kakadu National Park is one of those top birding sites of the world. I can highly recommend it.

There's lots of diversity, just really amazing things you can see there. But then as you move south towards the center of the continent, you have the red center. And this is characterized by arid country, deserts and very dry shrublands, grasslands. And at least some of us from America might picture that as the outback, even though I think the outback has a bit of a more broad definition. But in my mind, that's the outback, right? The dry parts of the central Australia. and I'm here in Australia's winter because, of course, it's in the southern hemisphere, so the tropical parts are warm year-round, but central Australia, it's definitely, it wasn't that hot.

Warm at times, but mostly pretty pleasant, whereas the entire northern territory can be pretty brutally hot in the austral summer. So this has been a good time of year to visit. Is it the best time of year to see all the birds? Maybe not. Maybe not the birds aren't quite as active as they might be at the Austral Spring, for example, or during that time. But as a tourist visiting Australia, this is a pretty pleasant time. So that's the northern territory. Then let's consider Queensland. The parts I've experienced have been the tropical parts. ecologically it's known as the wet tropics capital w capital t and this is right along the coastline around the city of cans which for those of you who don't know is spelled c a r n s so it looks to americans like cairns but it's cans and that is the heart of a region that is characterized by tropical rainforests one of which is the daintree rainforest which is a world heritage site

The forests there are really ancient and they have tons of biodiversity. They're really beautiful and really amazing. So that's right along the coastal areas. And of course, this is also really a great access point for the Great Barrier Reef. So a lot of people come through the city of Cairns to go out to the reef and do scuba diving and snorkeling and stuff. And having done that, I got to tell you, I highly recommend it. Really just an amazing experience to go snorkeling on the reef. but I did not do that this time.

So you've got these tropical rainforests along the coast, and then as you move to the west, you move inland. There are mountain ranges there, the Great Dividing Range. And then to the west of the mountains, you have this kind of rolling plateau called the Atherton Tablelands. It's where I am right now. Atherton Tablelands. Table because it's like a high plateau relative to the coast,

but the natural ecosystem there is still rainforest. And across the region, the rainforest exists in patches. There's some very large areas that are protected, thankfully. But as you get to the tablelands, there's a lot of agriculture. It's more pastoral, and the rainforest kind of exists in these smaller patches. But there's still a lot of biodiversity that exists in this region, including quite a few endemic species found nowhere else. Okay, let's start to concentrate on the birds.

I would like at some point to actually do a more thorough, in-depth look at the Ava fauna of Australia, to give you a better sense of the different families and the distributions of birds and evolutionary history and all that good stuff. So for today right now, I'm just doing a very quick overview of all of this. Overall, Australia has a pretty high level of avian diversity with about 900 species. and that's actually pretty impressive for a continent that is by and large mostly arid. So a lot of that diversity is concentrated in those tropical regions. But Australia has plenty of bird species that have really expansive ranges that can be found across most of the continent. So we're talking about 900 species overall and then within the northern territory, which is an Australian state,

just an arbitrary region, but for the record, there are about 430 species there. And of those, the ones that are most commonly reported on I Naturalist are the zebra finch, Australian ringneck, which is a type of parrot, crested pigeon, white plumed honey eater, and yellow-throated miner. And then over in the east, in Queensland, there are about 670 bird species. and the most commonly reported of those are the Bush Thickney, or also known as the Bush Stone Curlew, the Australian brush turkey, southern cassowary,

orange-footed megapode, also known as orange-footed scrub fowl, and the Sahul Sunbird. All right, well, I will now share with you my experiences on this trip. First of all, I just want to say I've had a fabulous time. Again, Australia delivers. You know, I said earlier that it's basically my favorite place in the world to visit, at least when we talk about a broad region. And why is that?

Well, as a North American, visiting Australia is, you know, it's almost like going to another planet in terms of the biodiversity. What with all the marsupials and the monotrems and the weird plants and all the birds that are so different, including entire bird families. There are lots of interesting reptiles and frogs. So there's all the natural aspects. And then you have the fact that, I mean, just to be honest, it's, you know, people speak English. That's helpful. I can drive around pretty easily. I'm comfortable driving on the left side of the road.

So it's really easy to get around. The infrastructure is good. You know, it's just a welcoming place in general for tourism. So it's got this kind of exotic feel, at least relative to North America. America and then you have, you know, it's relatively easy access with good amenities. So yeah, I mean, it may not be as adventurous as many other places. You know, I just was in Mongolia prior to Australia. I just led a tour there. And then my buddy and I went off into the Gobi Desert to explore that on our own. And yeah, that was that was a bit more adventurous. That was, you know,

I was a little bit anxious about some of that, especially the personal exploration. You know, we just had a four-wheel drive vehicle and drove off into the desert. And we had a fabulous time, but yeah, that is kind of like high adventure these days, at least for people like me. You know, I don't do like base jumping or parkour or going in submersibles to the bottom of the ocean or being in the military or whatever. Anyway, my life is pretty tame, even though I travel a lot. So yeah, the Gobi Desert was fantastic. That's a story for another time. Anyway, Australia, super chill. super great. So what I did was I routed through Darwin that I ended up in Alice Springs, which is a town very much in the center of the continent. And I thought it might be a little more

kind of frontier town in terms of its vibe. But I was, yeah, I really, I really liked Alice Springs. I thought it was quite pleasant or is quite pleasant. And yeah, I could see why people live there. So I ended up renting a camper van for about a week in the Red Center. And so I started in Alice Springs and even just right there in town started to get lifers, right? Started to get bird species that had never seen before. And one of the things about Australia, you know, I'd seen the gala. The gala is a type of cockatoo. I'd seen that species before.

But, you know, I woke up the first morning and there are these flocks of gala flying around screaming. So, you know, this cockatoo species is just, you know, a typical neighborhood bird in that part of Australia. And that's just, you know, again, that is the comparison from living in North America to going to Australia. Those kind of things happen. But the first really exciting lifer I got in Alice Springs was the western Bowerbird. And that was at the botanical garden there in town. Bower birds all belong to a single family and they are a special group of birds found in Australia. Malaysia, Australia, New Guinea. And these are the birds where typically that, well, it is the male

that makes a bower, which is some kind of constructed thing, made of sticks and leaves, and then often decorated with colorful items, flowers, shells, rocks, sometimes plastic from human trash. And each bower bird species makes a special, has a bower that has its own architecture, its own structure. And the male does this to impress visiting females, to show off his skills so that the female will choose him to mate, and then they go off and they breed and the nest is elsewhere. So the bower is not a nest, but it is an arena for the male to show off his skills and his own beauty. The western Bowerbird is dark overall with this kind of black head and back and neck, but with these golden spots all over that are really nice looking,

kind of a pale underside. But especially the male, he has this nukal patch, so this patch of feathers on the back of his neck that could be described or are described as a crest, but they're this lilac purple. This patch is lilac purple, and it's really beautiful. And that's actually, you know, not the first time I saw the Western Bower bird.

That was just at a bower in the botanical gardens. It was super easy. It was right there. The bird was present at the bower, and he was really chill, probably because he sees lots of people walking around. So I got great looks at that bird. But another time elsewhere where I saw this species,

I just heard this thing scrapping around in the bushes, making these low guttural calls. And I looked with my binoculars. I saw some movement. And sure enough, I saw that patch of purple feathers. And that's what gave it away, ah, Western Bowerbird. So that was exciting to see not only the bird,

but to see the bower, to see the bird going about repairing and working on his bower, so it's just super cool. So then in my camper van, I drove west, went out into the bush, leaving town, and the first place I went was Joritja National Park. That's spelled T-J-O-R-I-T-J-A. That's from the language of the local Aboriginal people, but it's also known as West MacDonald National Park.

And there are these long east-west running mountain ranges running in parallel, and you have all these uplifted layers of sedimentary rock or maybe metamorphic. But they've been warped into these ripples across the landscape. And so it's really beautiful and unique, really nice. So I spent a couple days exploring that area. And then I spent several days in the area to the southwest of there around Uluru Katajuta National Park. And if there's one place that I always wanted to see when I first learned about the red center of Australia, that was Uluru, this massive sandstone rock, this single rock that is often touted as the single largest monolith in the world, formerly known or also known as Ayers Rock, A-Y-E-R, Ulu-R, Ulu-R, is amazing. It really exceeded my expectations for grandeur, for beauty.

you have this relatively flat landscape, just kind of shrubs and low grasses and dunes. And then as you approach, as you get within 20 miles or whatever, you see this broad, rust-red, massive rock on the horizon. And so that was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream was to see that rock. And I hiked around it, got really great views from different angles, got to see it in the morning and the evening and found some great birds around there. And then nearby in that same region is Katta, K-A-T-A, and then second word T-J-U-T-A. That is a similar but geologically somewhat different outcropping of these massive rust-red rocks. They form these huge domes that are all

eroded and just into these fantastical shapes and you can hike around through them. And so, again, just a magical place to visit. So in terms of the birds, you know, I saw a lot of those common species and some of those were lifers for me, so I definitely picked up some new species for my life list, one of which was the zebra finch. And it's interesting because, you know, doing this podcast to the science of birds, zebra finch is a model organism in biology, meaning that scientists have looked to the zebra finch as a species species to learn a lot about birds in general or vertebrates or whatever.

You know, for example, that the way they learn their vocalizations, things like that. So they turn up a lot when I'm doing research for many different topics in bird biology, in ornithology. And I'd seen them in pet stores and, you know, all that. I'd seen them in real life before, but to see them in the wild doing their thing was fantastic. The first time I saw them, I was just in this little roadside pullover, taking a break and there was a puddle of water and a few of these little zebra finches were drinking from the water and I was just thrilled to see them. And you probably know what they look like but geez, they're so cute. I mean, I saw tons of them and they're just the most ridiculously

cute little birds. They're tiny. They got those bright pink orange bills and they vocalize quite often just kind of murmuring and talking to each other. Yeah, totally love them. Just fantastic. And you know, we call them zebra finches, but they're not closely related to the so-called true finches. That's the family fringilidae. I did an entire podcast episode on that. Zebra finches are in the family estrildadidae, and that's the family of the wax bills and their so-called allies. We'll talk about them on a podcast. At some point, they'll get their day, but there are quite a few other representatives of that family in Australia, and all of them are really, really charming.

The Gouldian finch is perhaps the most beautiful, this kind of rainbow-colored little tiny finch. It's really amazing. So some other new birds for me in the red center included some fairy wrens. So fairy wrens are a great family for Australia. I saw the splendid fairy wren as well as the purple-backed fairy wren. Little families of them hopping around in the bushes,

there will often be at least one male that was quite colorful. The splendid male, the splendid fairy wren male, is really quite splendid, actually. This electric blue bird all over with black markings on the face and the neck and just really gorgeous. And I also saw some representatives of the Old World Parrot family.

And that family is Cytoculidae. P-S-I-T-A-C-U-L-I-D-A-E. Sittaculity, we'll talk about that in its own podcast episode at some point. So one of the birds it was exciting to see again because it's iconic, but to see it in the wild is something different as the budgie, the budgerigar. So these are the little parakeets that have been sold in pet stores since the dawn of time.

And we had a budgie when I was a kid. We had a blue one. He was cool. His name was Buddy, as far as I remember. Not very creative, Buddy the budgey. But yeah, we loved him. And so now I got to see these things in the wild. They're green and yellow and they're flying around talking to each other

And I actually ended up seeing quite a few of them Especially at Katajuta National Park So that was very cool And then another beautiful representative of the old world parrot family Is the Australian ringneck This species is a nice mixture of dark green And lime green with yellow accents And a black head with blue patches

A little bit of red just really a beautiful bird And then earlier I mentioned the gala, right? That's a member of the cockatoo family, cacetoo-a-di. But an exciting lifer that I got in the red center was the pink cockatoo. Again, just woke up one morning in my camper van, hearing these squawks outside, look outside, and there's just groups of these beautiful pink cockatos squabbling with each other. And one of the great things about this species is it has this crest, and when they raise the crest, it just reveals this beautiful sunbrows. pattern of yellow and reddish orange. It's really spectacular. And then we haven't mentioned them

yet as a group, but there are the honey eaters, right? This is a family that is quite special for Australasia. That's the family Melophagody. There are a whole bunch of them all across Australia, and I'd seen other species in other places, like in the northern, northern territory in Queensland and in Tasmania and so on. But some new ones that were special for me, that were lifers for the Red Center, included the black honey eater, white plumed honey eater,

spiny-cheeked honey eater, singing honey eater, and gray-headed honey eater. So, yeah, I totally love honey eaters. I look forward to doing an entire podcast episode on the family Mela Fagody. Now, another species that's in that same family

is the crimson chat. And I was excited to see that bird for the first time. It's a famously nomadic species that roams across Australia. And that's true of the budgies as well, the budger agar. They just kind of follow the food and water sources. But the crimson chat is a smallish honey eater, and it's really nice looking. The male is very brightly colored. He's got a black mask with a pale eye, a red cap, and really vibrantly red breast and belly,

and then a white throat, black back, just, you know, black. black, white, red, beautiful pattern, really bold, wonderful bird. So, yeah, I got, you know, a handful of lifers, saw some good birds in the red center, had a lovely time walking around those fantastical geological formations, visiting some of the sites to learn about the Aboriginal culture there, which is really rich and vibrant, and really just really fascinating to think of people living in Australia and in that part of Australia as well for at least 60,000 years, living off the land,

especially in those places that are so arid and seemingly unforgiving. So, yes, it's just really impressive. There's lots to learn about in the Red Center. So then I came over here. I left my little camper van behind and I had a different mode of travel.

So I arrived in the city of Cairns at the airport, picked up a rental car, and then came here to an Airbnb. And I've basically used this as a home base out in the Atherton Tablelands and then just made forays out into the field from here. So it's been really relaxing and really nice. And this is a really cool Airbnb. It's just like it's on a big property, you know, just views in all directions. Really fantastic.

Now, one thing that happened is that even though this is technically the dry season, it's winter, it has rained quite a lot. So I had several days of rain and that was, you know, pretty challenging. Not quite what I expected. So I didn't get out and go birding as much as I wanted to. However, I still have had lots of great experiences and got some, you know, really, really big targets for me that I was able to find. Now, I will say that I did not see a southern cassowary on this trip. I've seen that species before and it is spectacular. It's definitely a bird that is special to the.

this part of Queensland. So if you're a birder, that is often the number one target species you would have if you arrived in this part of Australia. So like when we lead a tour that comes here, typically on the brochure that we make, the itinerary, we put the cassowary as the cover bird. Now that said, it's not guaranteed that everybody's going to see it. It can be elusive, but there are some places where it's pretty regularly seen. And I happened to be in places where the bird is definitely there, definitely has passed through within a day or so of me being there, but I just didn't get lucky to actually encounter one. If I had more time and I could actually, you know, go to these known sites and spend more time,

I'm sure I would find them. And if I had never seen one, that's probably what I would have done. I would have just like, you know, throwing everything out the window and said, I'm going to find a cassowary and I don't care about any other birds or any other thing. That's what I'm going to find. But the pressure was not quite on because I'd seen it before. So, birding in this part of Queensland is really enjoyable. There are so many species, and even at this time of year, which is again the winter,

because it's the tropics, there's still lots of activity, birds are vocalizing, singing. For example, one of the iconic sounds of the wet tropics, and this part of Australia is the song of the Eastern Whipbird. And that's a good name for this bird because the sound. it makes sounds like a cracking whip has this long drawn-out note that then ends with this strong punctuation at the end. And the eastern whipbird is in a family called Sophotidae, P-S-O-P-H-O-D-I-D-A-E. Yet again, a special Australasian family. There are only five species in that family, and those are the whipbirds and the wedgebills.

The eastern whipbird is kind of a J-like bird with a long tail. It's very dark over overall has a dark olive green back and a black head with a nice black crest and a bold white cheek patch and then a black underside. So nice looking handsome bird, a little bit hard to find to actually see. You hear them all the time. But it's one of those things where they're almost like ventriloquists. You hear them and you try to locate them by their sound and that's really difficult. Is it up high in the tree? Is it on the ground? Is it left, right? A little hard to tell. And then a couple familiar birds of this region I mentioned earlier are the orange-footed megapode, also called orange-footed scrub fowl, and the Australian brush turkey. And these two birds are in the family megapotity, the megapodes.

We'll talk about them in their own podcast episodes someday, that family. Because one of the really amazing things about that family you may have heard of is that the males typically make a mound of vegetation. One or more females will lay the eggs in that vegetation. And it's the decay of the vegetation that generates heat, and that is what incubates the eggs. The birds themselves do not sit on the eggs. And the male tends to his mound to regulate the temperature. And that's all I'll say for now because I don't want to give you more spoilers for the future episode. But anyway, these two species, you see them quite commonly.

And yes, just because it's called a brush turkey does not mean it's at all in any way closely related to the turkeys of North America. And then we have the one representative of the bird of paradise family. That family is Paradisaeity or Paradisiidae, and that bird in Queensland is Victoria's rifle bird. The male is this deep velvet black, and he does a display for the female, or he spreads out his wings in kind of these Mickey Mouse ears, oval-shaped pattern where he raises his wings. And he spreads out his breast feathers that are, again, all black, but he's got this metallic bluish-green patch on the throat. and his mouth is lined with bright, vibrant yellow skin. And he does a dance for the female and the whole thing, you know, like Birds of Paradise typically do.

So I heard and saw quite a few of those Victoria's rifle birds, and that was very cool. Another bird that's iconic in this region, which you often hear more than see, is the Wampu fruit dove. This is a large dove, big, chunky oval-shaped or football-shaped body. It's got a gray head, but it has this beautiful, beautiful rich plum-colored breast and belly.

And then the back is a mixture of yellow and green and kind of an olive color. Just a gorgeous bird, really charismatic. And then you can't go to Queensland without running into some rainbow lorikeets. They're all around town in cans. And true to their name, these are small parrots that are rainbow color, just spectacular and very cheeky and charismatic little rascals. and there are other really interesting and beautiful little representatives of that old-world parrot family in the region. A couple commonly encountered species in the forest are the pale yellow robin and the gray-headed robin.

These are both members of the family Petroicity, the Australasian robins. And they're both quite cute. They have big heads, proportionally large heads and big eyes. And interestingly, and this is true for other species in this family, at least some, they're quite confiding. So, you know, you see this little bird flitting around off the side of the trail quite close to you and you look over and it's hanging out, clinging to a vertical branch looking right at you, and it's often a pale yellow robin.

This cute little bird kind of looking at you expectantly like, can I help you? G'day! Anyway, very cute and very common. So I did pick up some pretty exciting lifers, and a couple of those represented entirely new families for me. You know, if you're a birder, you're often keeping lists of things you see. So classic being your life list, right? The species that you have seen in your lifetime all around the world, you're running list. So when I say I got a lifer, that's what that means. But there's many different ways of lists, listing. It's kind of gamifying your birding life, right? One of the ones that I find

most exciting and one of the ways to do that is to have a list of bird family. that I have seen at least one representative of. Now, it's been a while since I tallied up the number of families. That's not as easy to do with your e-bird data. But in general, there are about 250 bird species in the world. And every time I get a new one, it's very exciting. So I saw the yellow-breasted boat bill, which is in a family Macchi Rurinkedy that has only two species,

found only in Australasia, and this little bird is super cute. it is black and yellow and white all over really boldly brightly patterned brightly colored and it has a relatively big head a tail that it holds um cocked up it has a bill that is kind of spatulate flattened kind of like a flycatcher some of the flycatchers we have in north america as though you flattened it from top to bottom so broad in the side to side dimension and thin otherwise and it has a little hook at the end. So anyway, just a great to see a representative of a new family. And it's a great bird. And then there is a species that I have wanted to see ever since my first trip to Queensland, Australia. When I was looking at the birdfield guide at home,

I saw this bird and for some reason I fixated on it and really wanted to see it. And that is the Chow Chila. I think partially just because the name is funny and I learned that it is an endemic to Queensland, so it has a very small range only in the wet tropics of Queensland, and it's a skulky bird, so that means it's difficult to find. And sure enough, on my previous two visits to Queensland, I have not seen this species. So I was pretty determined to find this one. This was one of my top targets for this trip. And as you probably know, you can go on eBird and see where birds have been seen in, you know, whether it's a day or three days or 30 days, whatever within a certain radius of where you are.

It's a really great tool. E-bird is for finding where the birds are, even at that kind of scale of where was this species seen within the last day, at least, you know, as it was recorded in E-bird. So I set out to find it and I was, well, I've kind of basically given away the punchline, right? I did find the bird. And the way I found it was that I was high,

I was thinking along this trail in a national park in some beautiful rainforest. I knew it was there, at least potentially, and it was kind of a quiet day. There weren't too many people around. And I was just moving along the trail, and there was this thicket of pandanus plant or pandanus, with these long leaves that have kind of a sawtoothed edge, very gnarly. Like, I wouldn't be able to go in there. It would be like going into a thicket of cactus, you know, pretty rough. But down in there among those leaves, I heard this rough guttural call, or they were these

hoarse, short, soft sounds that sounded very different from anything else I'd heard that day. So it caught my attention and the skulky behavior of being kind of scratching around on the ground among these plants in the shadows that suggested to me that maybe it was a chowchilla. But because of the thick vegetation, I couldn't get a really good look and I just saw a little bit movement in there and I kept repositioning trying to get a look. But I just sat there or stood there on the trail and patiently waited trying to get a view. And then sure enough, because I didn't really move and I was quiet, the bird appeared. And lo and behold, there was the chow chila. What does this bird look like? Well, it is medium sized, maybe like an American Robin or a European

Blackbird. It's dark overall, a very dark chocolate brown on the back with a longish tail, and it has really large feet, so kind of disproportionately large feet. And a medium-sized bill, and then the underside on the male is all white from the throat down to the breast and belly. And then the female actually has more color than the male. She has a reddish-orange throat and breast. And then both sexes have a pale blue. blueish eye ring. So, you know, not like some amazingly, gorgeously colored or patterned bird, but here's the thing. First of all, it's endemic to that region and hard to find. And it is in its own family of the log runners. It's in a new family for me, the log runners, or thinecadie. And I believe

there are only five species in that family. So there you go. Another bird family. And at last, I saw the chow chila. I was super thrilled. I could just, I try to move really slowly to get a look at it, maybe hoping to get a picture with my phone or something, but these birds are super skittish. It was out of there once it realized I was there. But I did get to see it forging around, kicking in the leaf litter with those big feet. And that was just really wonderful. And then, actually, I saw another one the next morning when I was heading out to go birding early in the morning. I was driving along. The road dipped down into a gullible. where there was rainforest on either side.

And sure enough, a chow chilla flew right in front of my car. And it was unmistakable. And I'm glad I didn't hit it. I wasn't that close. But that would have been terrible. But yeah, so I did see a couple chow chow chow chow chow. How do you say chow chow chow chow in plural? Who knows?

Maybe the Australian folks can tell me. Okay, and I've got one more bird for you. Now, this one wasn't really one I was even expecting to see, so it wasn't really on my like must go try to find this bird list. But I ran into this nice couple of birders. They were Australians. And they tipped me off to where they had, they had gotten some information from other birders

about where the golden Bowerbird might be found. Now, of course, like I said, you can go to E-Bird and get data on where these birds are. But that doesn't mean you show up and then it's easy to find them. So the thing is with Bowerbirds that I didn't quite mention earlier, but I meant to, is that because the male makes a bower, and for most bower birds, they use that same bower for year after year,

sometimes even over a decade. So if you find the bower and it's a known site, then that's really cool because you have a better chance of seeing at least the male, if not both the male and female. So this nice couple gave me the location of a bower, and when I could a couple days later, I made my way out there to this national park, kind of on the western edge of the Atherton Tablelands.

And I had some very specific directions. So I parked and I started walking down the road, just this gravel road. And then there was the forest on either side. And so I followed directions and went into the forest, not on any known trail or anything. And within, I kid you not, like two minutes, I look up and there he is, the golden Bowerbird male. This is a J-sized bird, and he is a kind of a mustard yellow on the back, and then a brighter lemon yellow on his throat and underside. Really, a really cool bird with a pale eye, and he was checking me out, looking at me, wondering what the heck I'm doing in his forest and approaching his bower. So I got great looks, got a little short video, and that was just this amazing lifer to get that I kind of didn't think I would see.

and so thank you to those nice birders that I met on the trail. You know, that's the great thing about most birders, right? Most birders are really friendly and like to share that kind of information, and we all benefit, you know, from that greater appreciation of birds. So it's just wonderful. And so after that male exited the scene and I never saw him again, even though I waited around, tried to find him again, tried to find a female. The female's the same shape, just brown overall.

I never saw any more of them. But I did find the bower, and that was cool. It's just this kind of pile of sticks. And yeah, it was just a really special moment to be back there in the forest and see the bower bird and the bower and the other bird species that were around. Now, I haven't really mentioned non-avian wildlife much in this episode. In part, that's because I didn't really see a whole lot. Interestingly, in the red center, I was a little surprised because I didn't see any kangaroos

or any other marsupials. I mean, you see plenty of signs, right? So these, you know, kangaroo warning signs on the highways, the obligatory photo that you have to get as a tourist in Australia. In the red center, I did, however, see a dingo, right? So a dingo is basically a dog or, you know, the same species as the wolf. So it's the descendant. The dingo is a descendant of domesticated dogs that people brought to Australia,

probably sometime, you know, between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago. So not technically native to Australia originally, but the dingo has been in Australia for so long that it's become naturalized. It has become part of the natural ecosystem. So, you know, for a visitor like me, it's pretty exciting to see a dingo. And then over in Queensland and here, like right where I am now, this area of the Atherton Tablelands is known for tree kangaroos. In case you didn't know, there are, you know, 10 or so, maybe 12 tree kangaroo species in the world. And these are true kangaroos. They're in the same family as kangaroos and wallabies and all that.

But this group has evolved to be arboreal. So they still have long tails, but they clamber around in tree branches, kind of like slow-moving monkeys. And I've known about these since I was a kid, and I thought how cool that is. And I've long wanted to see a tree kangaroo. so I was like, oh, this is great. I'm staying at this Airbnb surrounded by forest. There should be tree kangaroos. The owner of the Airbnb left, you know, notes and said,

hey, you know, keep an eye out for the tree kangaroos. They're on the property sometimes. So I thought, here we go. Surely this is it. And there were a couple road signs, specifically about warning about tree kangaroos, right? The yellow diamond-shaped sign and then with a black tree kangaroo icon. And did I see any tree kangaroos?

No, I did not. I looked up in the trees. I had to stop myself at some point. I looked up at so many trees, at so many branches walking along the trails, scanning, scanning for tree kangaroos. I had to tell myself at some point, just, dude, give up. Stop looking up in the trees. So anyway, a bust on the tree kangaroos. However, I did get one more bucket list animal, and that'll be the last one I tell you about. And that was the platypus. I've never seen a platypus until. I've never seen a platypus until this trip and I looked on I Naturalist to see where people have been seeing them lately. So again, great crowdsourced data, citizen science that you can use to find the things you're interested in. And so yeah, I went to a known hotspot for platypus and didn't spend that long

walking along this muddy creek and boom, there it was. Arguably one of the weirdest mammals on the planet, an egg-laying mammal, right? And there it was floating at the surface of the water. It was super cute, super adorable, smaller than I expected. I don't know why. I just thought pletipus were a little bit larger. And then a second one popped up and they swam alongside each other, you know, diving and surfacing, diving and servicing. And it was just fantastic. I was so thrilled to finally see that animal, one of the only egg-laying mammals on the planet.

And of course, iconic for Australia. So that is a little bit about my time here. It has been spectacular. I ended up seeing 118 bird species overall, unless I pick up any more between here in the airport. And of those 118 bird species, 40 of them were brand new to me. They were lifers. That's very exciting. So yeah, that is it for this From the field episode about Australia.

Who knows where the next From the Field episode will be, but these are always fun to do. And I know that many of you enjoy listening to this sort of travel log kind of episode. episode. And I will say that if this intrigues you, if you're interested in joining me in the Northern Territory, so that's going to be in 2028, and we're going to do the area around Darwin in the northern, you know, kind of coastal area and Kakadu National Park, all of that, the tropical savannas, which is really spectacular. We did that last time on our tour, and then we'll also do the Red Center, probably fly between the two, and then, you know, explore both of those equally. So if you want to hear about that when I announced that, then I encourage you to

get on the mailing list of my tour company, which is called Wild Latitudes. So if you go to wildlatitudes.com, you can get on the mailing list, or you can just email me here, Ivan at Science of Birds.com, to let me know that you'd like to be on the mailing list for wild latitudes, and that way you'll be the first to know when we announced that tour. Yeah, and I'm super excited to go back and to take a group of people there and have a blast to see all of these birds and more. Now, before I go, I want to thank the new supporters of the Science of Birds podcast.

You know, it's been, I was traveling, I've been traveling for a couple months, and so I am overdue for thanking many of you who have signed up to be supporters on Patreon. So thank you so much to Jay Ullman, Yandi, Tom Newmark, Robin Slovak, Julie Silva, Dana, Olivia Crab Tree, Dahlia Girl, Corda, Nicholas Wasslin, Eve, Dave Roodmiller, Bailey Whedon, Suzanne Ritter, Natasha Gaytondi, Gayton, Sarah Lawrence and Fran L.

And apologies for any mispronunciations. If you're interested in becoming a supporter yourself, then you can check out my Patreon page at patreon.com slash science of birds. and I'll try to remember to put a link in the show notes for this episode. It should say, support the show. If you have anything you'd like to share with me, you can send me an email, and my address is again, Ivan at Scienceofbirds.com. This is episode 136, and I will put the show notes up on the website and try to put a few photos of the birds I'm talking about today,

so you'll have visual aides rather than just my silly words. And before you know it, I will be putting out more podcast, episodes. Of course, random bird Thursdays will pop up randomly and talk about random birds on random days. Well, it'll always be Thursday, but at random intervals. And I'll also be putting out more of my typical programming, my scripted podcast episodes. So stay tuned for all of that. And thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for listening for your interest in birds, for being cool and attractive and highly intelligent. Talk to you next time. Cheers.