The tawny frogmouth is the bird of winners – at least politically.
Three of the MPs who chose the introverted icons as their bird of the year also happen to be among those who took blue ribbon seats off Liberal MPs.
Labor’s Mary Doyle and Michelle Ananda-Rajah and the Kooyong independent Dr Monique Ryan all nominate the socially awkward hide-and-seek champion as their favourite bird, along with Labor’s Josh Burns, who has so far managed to hold off a strong Greens challenge for his seat.
Ryan says she sees some similarities between the tawny frogmouth and her new job.
“I love them,” she says. “You sometimes see them in Kooyong but their camouflage means that sighting one requires a certain calm and patience. Kind of like dealing with the major parties in Canberra.”
A perennial runner-up, the tawny frogmouth remains in the top three of the Australian bird of the year poll, but it is facing a strong challenge from the swift parrot.
The independent Australian Capital Territory senator David Pocock remains on team gang-gang – the official bird of the nation’s capital: “2023 should be the year the gang-gang cockatoo takes its rightful place at number one. These charcoal coloured cockatoos are incredible,” he says in his gang-gang campaign video.
“They sound like a squeaky door, and are definitely one of the funnest cockatoos to try and imitate.”
Pocock says their endangered status and the impact of the bushfires should be enough to get all of Australia behind the Canberra favourite (you’d also find yourself on side with Guardian Australia’s editor, Lenore Taylor, who remains a towering force in team gang-gang).
The prime minister went for the safe (and already knocked-out) choice of the sulphur-crested cockatoo – instantly recognised across the nation and either loved or hated, depending on the level of damage to your deck. It may be the only thing Albanese and the Queensland LNP MP Andrew Fisher ever agree on.
The Western Australia Labor MP Sam Lim nominated Carnaby’s black-cockatoo, WA’s own version of the gang-gang, known for being “playful” and “always hungry”.
BirdLife Australia volunteers have canvassed as many MPs as possible to try to find the powerbrokers’ favourite birds – as well as remind them of the need to protect those very same birds through stronger environmental protection laws.
On that note, the Queensland Greens senator Larissa Waters nominated the bar-tailed godwit – a wandering record breaker, with at least one having flown, non-stop, from Alaska to Tasmania in 11 days. The birds have a more consistent record than Qantas, sleeping with one eye open to ensure they get to their destination in one shot. But while distance has not defeated the birds, humans are having an impact. A development is threatening one of their main Queensland breeding grounds.
But it was perhaps the Labor Hunter MP Dan Repacholi who gave the most original response, nominating the underappreciated Australian brush turkey “because, like me, it’s so ugly it’s beautiful”.
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