It’s no secret, Dr Ann Jones is a bird lover… but Brisbane’s urban birds surprise even her with their diversity and tenacity.
Over 230 species of birds call the city home and many of them nest, breed and feed in the most unlikely of places.
Deep in the heart of an industrial suburb, land saved from development because it’s a low-lying floodplain has become a birding hotspot, with more diversity than Kakadu. On Oxley Creek Common, Ann spots the sparkling plumage of spectacular Red-backed Fairy-wrens, watches black-winged stilts hunt in the mud and spies a cinnamon brown Pheasant Coucal.
In a seaside suburb on Moreton Bay, Ann watches Osprey fish for morning tea. They take their catch back to a nest they’ve ingeniously built on a navigation beacon. Safe from boats and planes.
In the suburbs, the unstoppable Brush Turkey is ruffling residents’ feathers by building his nest and destroying a manicured backyard. But his antics are the result of 30 million years of evolution, and the fact that they exist in our midst at all is a marvel of adaptation.
Meanwhile, as the big trees come crashing down in our suburbs, so do the numbers of a national treasure, the Laughing Kookaburra. But can the chainsaws also save these iconic birds?
Production credit: Producer/Director: Ian Withnall, Associate Producer: Hannah Draper, Series Producer: Elle Gibbons, Executive Producer: Penny Palmer, Acting Head of Factual and Culture: Richard Huddleston
