
But apart from sparrows, pipits and finches, little BBs are a closed field guide to me.

These are Australian bustards (Ardeotis australis), those big, beautiful but unfortunately declining birds of the open plains. I'd like to say that I saw these individuals in the wild but they're at Serendip Sanctuary, SW of Melbourne. I've only seen this species in the bush on one occasion—at Fossilbrook in North Queensland. (I mentioned it in an earlier post about bustards.) I'm hoping to see them when I visit that way again in the middle of this year. But I won't hold my breath.

I passed the five hundred mark with a group of four stately Australian bustards. It was nice to have these big turkey-like birds as the milestone bird. At the time of European settlement I could have got them on the outskirts of Melbourne but these slow-moving creatures apparently taste delicious and were quickly shot out. Even in these remote areas where their habitat hasn't gone under the plough, they make a nice meal for the locals, who can easily pick them off from the back of a four-wheel drive. They are now only commonly found in conservation zones and in fact the birds I saw were within the borders of a national park.

But the population plummeted after 1870. Less than a century later, bustards were thought to be extinct in Victoria. Today, they are known to occur in very low densities in a couple of areas in the NW of the state. In other parts of Australia, they are faring better but are nowhere abundant.

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* There's always the possibility that tree sparrows are, in fact, as common as rats and I've over-estimated my ability to identify them.
** The book documents his bid to break the Australian record of 700 birds in a year. He started on Jan 1st with a sooty owl (Tyto tenebricosa) in Gembrook, Victoria, and ended on Dec 30th with number 703, a little bittern (Ixobrychus minutus) at Sherwood, Qld.