You can't expect non-Aussies to understand the ingeniousness of our birds. Like the maggie who can nick me precisely on the ear lobe exposed by my bike helmet. Or the Kookaburra who can swoop down to extract, mid flight, a slice of meat from a sandwich held by an unsuspecting tourist.
This actually functions similar to a controlled burn and helps prevent larger, more devastating bushfires from occurring when too much fuel builds up, and also rejuvenates many kinds of plants for which fire is an essential part of its lifecycle. It's fascinating.
Similarly, Australian Ravens are great. Characterful and bright. The young have a great sense of fun and are entertaining to watch. I have seen them playing a game of chase round the garden, play-fighting over a prized mango leaf. Adults are oddly risk-averse given their heft. Smaller birds seem able to intimidate them quite easily.
Odd by comparison to the smaller magpies, currawongs, blue-faced honeyeaters & noisy miners that can so readily shoo them off. They're pretty shy with people too, which isn't true of many common urban birds. Though that shyness may have quite separate origins (humans being what they are and all that).
I wonder if it's a behavioural strategy somehow related to their carrion-scavenging niche.
