Lunch Date?

If you’ve tried to have your lunch in a park in Sydney, you’re usually not alone. As soon as you unwrap whatever it is you plan to eat, you make a few friends of the winged variety. By far the most irritating are the seagulls and the dirtiest are the pigeons, but what is that massive white bird with the long black beak stalking your sandwich? That is an ibis.

Ibis are native to Australia, but are found in other parts of the world, especially Africa. In Australia, they are more common in swamp areas further in land, but due to drought they’ve been moving to more coastal regions and you can now find them all over Sydney and further north in Brisbane.

In their natural environment, their usual diet consists of insects, crayfish and mussels and you’ll see them dig out shellfish form the mud with their long beaks and then break them open on a rock. Today, however, you’ll see them competing for scraps with the pigeons and seagulls in Hyde Park and surrounds. They’ve perfectly adapted to life in suburban parks and it’s not uncommon to find one standing on a bin rim reaching in and picking out garbage with its beak like an animal world version of a Skill Tester. The coloured bands around their ankles and knees are part of a program to monitor the birds' movements as they've become a pest, but are still protected as Australian native animals. 

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