Birds
Australia and its territories are home to around 800 species of bird; about 350 of these are endemic to the zoogeographic region that covers Australia, New Guinea and New Zealand. The fossil record of birds in Australia is patchy; however, there are records of the ancestors of contemporary species as early as the Late Oligocene. Birds with a Gondwanan history include the flightless ratites (the Emu and Southern Cassowary), megapodes (the Malleefowl and Australian Brush-turkey), and a huge group of endemic parrots, order Psittaciformes. Australian parrots comprise a sixth of the world's parrots, including many cockatoos and galahs. The Kookaburra is the largest species of the kingfisher family, known for its call, which sounds uncannily like loud, echoing human laughter.
The passerines of Australia, also known as songbirds or perching birds, include wrens, robins, the magpie group, thornbills, pardalotes, the huge honeyeater family, treecreepers, lyrebirds, Birds of Paradise and bowerbirds. The Satin Bowerbird has attracted the interest of evolutionary psychologists; it has a complex courtship ritual in which the male creates a bower filled with blue, shiny items to woo mates.
Relatively recent colonists from Eurasia are swallows, larks, thrushes, cisticolas, sunbirds, and some raptors, including the large Wedge-tailed Eagle. A number of bird species have been introduced by humans; some, like the European Goldfinch and Greenfinch, coexist happily with Australian species, while others, such as the Common Starling, Common Blackbird, House Sparrow and Indian Mynah, are destructive of some native bird species and thus destabilise the native ecosystem.
About 200 species of seabird live on the Australian coast, including many species of migratory seabird. Australia is at the southern end of the East Asian-Australasian flyway for migratory water birds, which extends from Far-East Russia and Alaska through Southeast Asia to Australia and New Zealand. About two million birds travel this route to and from Australia each year. One very common large seabird is the Australian Pelican, which can be found in most waterways in Australia. The Little Penguin is the only species of penguin that breeds on mainland Australia.
Read more about this topic: Fauna Of Australia
Famous quotes containing the word birds:
“It would be well, perhaps, if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies.... Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“These beginnings of commerce on a lake in the wilderness are very interesting,—these larger white birds that come to keep company with the gulls.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Calico Pie,
The little Birds fly
Down to the calico tree,
Their wings were blue,
And they sang “Tilly-loo!”
Till away they flew—
And they never came back to me!”
—Edward Lear (1812–1888)