🦜 Birds of Australia

The emu is Australia's largest native bird and the world's second-tallest living bird after the ostrich, standing up to 1.9 metres with a shaggy coat of soft, grey-brown double-shafted feathers and a pale blue neck showing through sparse plumage. Endemic to the mainland, it roams savannah woodland, sclerophyll forest, and semi-arid scrub almost everywhere except dense rainforest and the driest deserts. Emus are omnivorous, eating seeds, fruit, growing shoots and insects, and they swallow stones to grind food in their gizzard. Completely flightless, they compensate with powerful legs that let them sprint at up to 48 km/h. Females boom and grunt using an inflatable throat pouch to court and defend territory, but after mating the male alone incubates the eggs for about eight weeks, losing roughly a third of his body weight without eating, drinking, or leaving the nest. Emus feature on the Australian coat of arms, and their crop-raiding once famously prompted the ill-fated 1932 "Emu War."

The southern cassowary is a huge, flightless rainforest bird reaching up to 2 metres tall and 85 kilograms in females (which are larger and more brightly coloured than males). It has glossy black bristle-like plumage, a vivid blue face and neck, red wattles, and a tall horn-like casque atop its head whose exact function is still debated. Confined in Australia to the tropical rainforests of far north Queensland, it forages alone on the forest floor for fallen fruit, fungi, insects, and small animals, and is a crucial disperser of large rainforest seeds that few other animals can swallow whole. Cassowaries are strong swimmers and can sprint at 50 km/h, and their dagger-like inner-toe claw makes them potentially dangerous, though confirmed human deaths are extremely rare. Males alone incubate the eggs and raise the striped chicks. Habitat loss and vehicle strikes have made the Australian population, estimated at only a few thousand birds, a serious conservation concern despite the species' healthy global numbers in New Guinea.

The laughing kookaburra is the largest member of the kingfisher family, a stocky, big-headed bird around 45 centimetres long with a whitish head, dark brown eye-stripe, mottled blue wing patches, and a heavy black-and-bone-coloured bill. Native to eastern Australia's open forests, woodlands, and leafy suburbs, it has also been introduced to parts of Western Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. Rather than fishing, it hunts from a perch, dropping onto lizards, insects, worms, mice, and even small snakes on the ground. It is famous for its raucous, cackling "laugh," used by family groups at dawn and dusk to declare territory, a call so evocative of the wild it has been used as a stock jungle sound in countless films despite the bird having nothing to do with jungles. Kookaburras are cooperative breeders, living in family groups where grown offspring from earlier broods help incubate eggs and feed new chicks, and pairs mate for life.

The Australian magpie is a familiar black-and-white songbird, 37 to 43 centimetres long, with a strong bluish-white bill, red eyes, and glossy plumage that differs subtly between the sexes, males showing pure white napes and females a greyer wash. It is found almost throughout Australia in grasslands, parks, farmland, and gardens, thriving alongside people. An omnivorous ground forager, it eats invertebrates, small vertebrates, and plant matter, and has even learned to safely flip and eat toxic cane toads. Magpies are regarded as among the world's most accomplished songbirds, producing complex, warbling, four-octave calls and mimicking dozens of other species. They live in cooperative, territorial groups and are highly intelligent, able to recognise upwards of 100 individual human faces and remember which ones treated them kindly. During spring, a small proportion of male magpies aggressively swoop pedestrians and cyclists near their nests, a behaviour that makes headlines every breeding season across the country.

The rainbow lorikeet is one of Australia's most vividly coloured parrots, with a deep blue head, green back and wings, bright orange-yellow breast, and blue belly, measuring 25 to 30 centimetres long. It ranges along the eastern coast from northern Queensland to South Australia, inhabiting rainforest edges, coastal woodland, and increasingly city parks and gardens, and has also become an established (and sometimes problematic) introduced species in Perth and New Zealand. Unlike seed-eating parrots, lorikeets have a specialised brush-tipped tongue for lapping up nectar and pollen, and eucalyptus blossom forms the core of their diet alongside fruit. They travel in noisy, fast-flying flocks that scream and chatter constantly, and pairs are typically monogamous for life. A still-unexplained seasonal illness causes temporary paralysis in thousands of lorikeets each year in parts of Queensland and New South Wales, a mystery researchers have linked to an unidentified native fruit or seed.

This large, unmistakable white parrot, 45 to 55 centimetres long, carries a tall, backward-curving yellow crest that it raises when alarmed or excited, along with a powerful black bill and pale eye-ring. It is common across northern and eastern Australia in woodlands, farmland, and cities, and has also been introduced around Perth. Highly social, it gathers in large, noisy flocks that forage on the ground for seeds, roots, and fruit, posting sentries in nearby trees to watch for danger while the group feeds. Sulphur-crested cockatoos are exceptionally intelligent and long-lived, with wild birds surviving 20 to 40 years and captive individuals recorded well past 70; some have even been documented learning, apparently through social observation, how to flip open household garbage bin lids. Piercing, raucous screeches carry over long distances through forest. Their intelligence and strong pair bonds make them popular, if demanding, companion birds worldwide, which has also fuelled illegal capture for the pet trade in parts of their range.

The galah is a medium-sized cockatoo around 35 centimetres long, easily recognised by its soft pink face and underparts contrasting with a pale grey back and a mobile, light pink crest. It occurs almost everywhere in Australia except the driest deserts and far northern Cape York, and has expanded its range with the spread of agriculture and artificial water sources. Galahs feed mainly on the ground on grass and herb seeds, often in large, mixed flocks of ten to over a thousand birds, and pairs form lifelong bonds, nesting in tree hollows. The species has entered Australian vernacular in an unusual way: "galah," borrowed from the Yuwaalaraay Aboriginal word "gilaa," is widely used as affectionate slang for a fool or clown, a nod to the bird's gregarious, sometimes comically boisterous behaviour. Wild galahs can live two decades, while captive birds have reached past 70 years old.

The black swan is a large waterbird, 110 to 142 centimetres long, with all-black plumage set off by white flight feathers visible in flight and a bright red bill tipped with a pale band. It favours large lakes, swamps, and rivers across southern Australia, especially the Murray-Darling Basin, and is notably nomadic, moving long distances to breed wherever rain fills inland wetlands. An almost entirely herbivorous grazer, it feeds on aquatic and marsh plants by dabbling, up-ending, or filter-feeding at the surface. Pairs are largely monogamous and mate for life, form loose flocks that can number in the thousands, and molt all their flight feathers at once after breeding, leaving them flightless for about a month. First recorded by Europeans in Western Australia in 1697, the species overturned the old European assumption that "all swans are white," and it remains the official emblem of Western Australia and the origin of the term "black swan event" for a rare, unforeseen occurrence.

Australia's largest bird of prey, the wedge-tailed eagle has a wingspan reaching up to 2.84 metres, dark blackish-brown plumage with tawny neck hackles, feathered legs, and the distinctive long, wedge-shaped tail that gives it its name. It occurs across the entire continent, including Tasmania, in habitats ranging from open woodland and grassland to desert and subalpine forest. A generalist predator and scavenger, it takes rabbits, wallabies, other birds, reptiles, and carrion, and pairs sometimes hunt cooperatively, occasionally even bringing down prey as large as young kangaroos. It soars for hours on thermals, reaching altitudes of 1,800 metres with barely a wingbeat, and pairs, which mate for life, build enormous stick nests reused and enlarged over many years. Despite historical persecution by graziers who blamed it for lamb losses, the mainland population has rebounded strongly, though the smaller, geographically isolated Tasmanian subspecies remains threatened by habitat loss and collisions with vehicles and wind turbines.

Often mistaken for an owl, the tawny frogmouth is actually more closely related to nightjars, a stocky, big-headed nocturnal bird 34 to 53 centimetres long with mottled silver-grey, black, and rufous plumage, large yellow eyes set to the sides of its head, and a wide, hooked bill fringed with bristles. Found throughout mainland Australia and Tasmania in forests, woodlands, and leafy suburbs, it is a master of camouflage, perching motionless on a branch by day with its head tilted up so it resembles a broken stub of wood. At night it drops from a perch to snatch large insects, spiders, small mammals, reptiles, and frogs, catching prey with its beak rather than talons, since its feet are relatively weak for a predator. Its deep, resonant "oom-oom-oom" call carries through the night, and pairs, which mate for life, duet during the breeding season. In cold weather frogmouths can enter torpor, slowing their metabolism to conserve energy through lean nights.

One of the world's largest songbirds, the superb lyrebird is a ground-dwelling, pheasant-sized bird of southeastern Australia's wet forests and rainforests, with males reaching about a metre long thanks to an extraordinary tail of sixteen feathers, including two curved, lyre-shaped plumes and delicate silvery filaments, fanned open during courtship. Females and juveniles have far plainer brown plumage and shorter tails. Lyrebirds forage by scratching through leaf litter for earthworms, insects, and fungi, turning over enormous volumes of soil each year and playing an outsized role in forest nutrient cycling and reducing bushfire fuel loads. Renowned as the animal kingdom's most accomplished vocal mimics, males build earthen display mounds where they sing elaborate songs combining original notes with astonishingly precise imitations of dozens of other bird species, and even (as widely reported, though isolated instances) camera shutters, chainsaws, and car alarms. Weak fliers that prefer running to escape danger, lyrebirds remain largely sedentary within small home territories for life.

This tiny, long-tailed songbird, only about 14 centimetres long and weighing under 15 grams, is best known for the brilliant iridescent blue cap, ear coverts, and tail of breeding males, set against a black mask and throat, while females and non-breeding males wear plain fawn-brown plumage. It is common across southeastern Australia, including Tasmania, in scrubby woodland, heath, and increasingly in suburban gardens with dense cover. Superb fairywrens feed mostly on small insects and spiders gleaned from low vegetation and the ground. Socially they live in cooperative family groups defending a shared territory, yet despite pairs appearing monogamous, genetic studies show both sexes frequently mate outside the pair bond, making it one of the most unfaithful species known in birds. Males famously pluck yellow flower petals to display to females outside their own territory. The species was voted Australia's Bird of the Year in 2021, narrowly beating the tawny frogmouth.

The Australian pelican is a huge white waterbird with black wing feathers, a pale pink bill, and a wingspan of up to 2.6 metres, possessing what is often cited as the longest bill of any living bird, with record specimens measuring around 50 centimetres. It occurs on lakes, rivers, estuaries, and coastal waters right across Australia, moving nomadically over long distances in response to rainfall and flooding, most spectacularly when tens of thousands converge to breed at inland lakes like Lake Eyre after rare, large-scale inundations. Feeding mainly on fish, it often cooperates with other pelicans, forming lines or circles in the water to herd fish into its expandable throat pouch, which can hold far more than its stomach can. Pelicans breed communally in large colonies, laying two eggs, and during courtship the bill and pouch flush orange, pink, or scarlet. In flight, small groups glide gracefully in V-formation, riding thermals for long distances with minimal effort.

Mature male satin bowerbirds are a striking glossy blue-black, the sheen produced by the fine structure of their feathers rather than pigment, with piercing violet-blue eyes, while females and young males are mottled olive-green and brown. Found in rainforest and wet eucalypt forest along Australia's east coast from Victoria to southern Queensland, with an isolated population in the far north, they feed mainly on fruit, supplemented by leaves, seeds, and insects. The species is famous for the male's elaborate bower, an avenue of sticks built on the ground and decorated almost exclusively with blue objects, from feathers and flowers to stolen clothes pegs and bottle caps, which he uses purely to attract mates rather than as a nest. Females inspect several bowers and males before choosing a partner, and males will raid and vandalise rivals' bowers to improve their own standing. Satin bowerbirds are notably long-lived for a songbird, with one banded individual surviving 26 years in the wild.