American Couple Reacts: Australia's Birds! 20 ICONIC Aussie Birds! FIRST TIME SEEING THEM!! 

We LOVE animals but one of us has a giant love for all things Avian! We love American Birds and British Birds but this is our VERY FIRST TIME EVER looking at Australian Birds! 20 Iconic Aussie bird photos with information in this episode! They are all incredibly interesting and much different than others we have seen. Certainly more colors! So grab a cuppa and start off your day with some beauty. Did your favorite make this list? Would you add different species? Let us know. And what is with that Masked creature? If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our channel, it is the BEST way to support our channel and it's FREE! Also, please click the Like button. Thank you for your support!

One bird that should have definitely been on that list is the Lyrebird. Incredible tail feathers and can mimic just about any sound. From other birds, chain saws, camera shutters, horns, dog barking you name it. They are local to my area and they are worth checking out. There are about 850 bird species in Australia and almost half are found nowhere else. Cheers Big Ears.

Can't believe the Cassowary bird didn't make the list. A very unique bird with a somewhat fearsome reputation

I’m surprised he didn’t include the Rosella (Eastern and Crimson varieties), the King Parrot and the iconic and world-famous Budgerigars. You need to check all these out.

I'm a British immigrant now living in Sydney. The amount, S I Z E and colour of the birds here really astounded me. My first introduction was the Ibis in the Sydney Botanic Gardens. I'm 183cm and they come up to my knee. Also, the sounds of the dawn chorus are completely different. I have cockatoos, kookaburras, Rainbow Lorikeets and magpies near my home and it is L O U D and really melodious. Look up "magpies warbling" if you want the effect.

The Magpies dawn chorus makes you so happy to be alive. Its beautiful

The black cockatoo is definitely missing, lyrebird and cassowary. I think you need to find a list of the birds that also give you an example of the sounds they make. I love hearing the Kookaburras sing every morning. It makes me feel so at peace and at "home". My dad's favourite was always the Willy Wagtail. I've never heard or seen the Gang Gang Cockatoo before.

there is a very good reason why the kookaburra 'sounds like a monkey', its because in a lot of jungle movies the monkeys you hear are actually kookaburras (usually added in afterword's, but occasionally because the movie was shot in Australia)

A great list of iconic birds. I think these were probably more common to the photographers part of Australia. Coming from Victoria, I would add to that list the Superb Lyrebird (a bird that can mimic everything from babies crying to chainsaws), the Eastern Rosella (famous for being the emblem of Tomato Sauce), the Crimson Rosella, the Brolga, the Little Penguin (yes, it is a bird!), the Helmeted Honeyeater (the State bird), the Bell miner or 'Bellbird' (which makes the 'tink' sound of bell in the bush), the Wattlebird, the Peregrine Falcon (they nest in skyscrapers of Melbourne), the Silvereye and the Australian King Parrot.

You can see a surprising amount of these in the suburbs of Melbourne (namely Sulphur crested cockatoo, rainbow lorikeet, magpies) I would add to the list: Black and red cockatoo Rosella And how he didn’t include the Cassowary (basically a living dinosaur) is inexcusable. Btw, I’m a tour guide in Melbourne, if you ever want any inside info (or to plan a trip here) let me know 😊

A magpie family will nest in the same tree every September (swooping season)and if you don't make friends with them they will remember and pass down info to the little ones.

A shame that he didn't play the sounds these birds make. That is the most amazing thing about Aussie birds. The song of the magpie, the screech of the cockatoo, are iconic Aussie. You absolutely know you are in Aus when you hear them..

From a fellow bird nerd, I can't believe there were no grass finches in this list? The Zebra finch is iconic, as is the Gouldian finch, but there are so many gorgeous Aussie finches. They're the size of sparrows and just lovely. Their sounds are lovely too. Please please look up Australian finches!!

Early this year I saw a Bin Chicken and a Bush Turkey having a fight on a path alone the Brisbane River. What made it hilarious was a Bush Curlew (who scream at night) looking on closely and stoically like a boxing umpire.

Nice selection by the fellow Aussie. Check out: The Australian King Parrot, OH!! The Budgie (Budgerigar), the Lyrebird (find a channel that has recorded their sounds), Cassowary, Pigeons like the Royal Pigeon and the Crested Pigeon, Kingfishers (other than the Kookaburra). There SO many more it's ridiculous.

Emus can grow up to 6.5 feet and weigh 121 lbs. They're cheeky buggers! They'll pinch a bag of potato chips out of your hand when you're not looking. They're really fast runners. My favourite Aussie bird is the magpie. They have the most beautiful song and are extremely intelligent. I used to leave food out in my driveway for them. One day I was late coming home and one of the magpies actually came and knocked on my front door lol 😅

The two birds I would have had in this list are the Superb Lyrebird for its ability to mimic any sound. There's a very good David Attenborough vid that shows this. The second is the Cassowary, our most dangerous bird.

Our Magpie's call is understood to be the most musically complex call. It is really amazing to listen to and is just a natural feature of the Aussie soundscape . In my area the Magpie call, the sulphur cockatoo call, the kookaburra, and the Bellbird just makes me feel at home.

You'll have to check out the lyrebird, watch a video so you can hear it rather than just a photo. It can imitate anything it hears from chainsaws to drills. A lost child was once rescued in the bush because one of the seachers heard what he thought was a child crying and it was actually a lyrebird so he realised the child would be in the area because the bird was imitating the child. True story.

As much as many people hate masked lapwings, I actually really love their call. From a bit of a distance, I think it's one of my favourite birdcalls, up there with the bellbird, lyrebird, eastern whipbird, and the currawong.

Oh Natasha/Debbie, We've just come back from Australia, 10 days ago, we were staying with my daughter who lives in NSW, she also loves birds..We saw her feed the Kookaburra's with minced meat, she placed on a tray, then lo! and behold, mom and dad came flying down, fed, then down came their three babies, which my daughter fed from her hand! What a thrill that was!

Fun fact: All of the world's song birds originated in Australia. Kookaburras are the largest of the kingfishers. Our magpies are not true magpies but are closely related to butcher birds. They are very intelligent and are not afraid of humans. We have lots of bird species where I live. There is a small lake at the edge of town which has more than 30 species living there. We have lots of parrot species which appear at different seasons. He has only touched on a small sample of birds. The most iconic of Australian birds is the budgerigar which is known worldwide.

Cassowary is iconic. Black cockatoos also. Australia also has a bird of paradise. Love sunbirds Brush turkeys And one of my other favourite birds the Torres Strait pigeon and brolga and white faced herons. You should take a look at the Gouldian Finch for a colour burst. At school we used to throw food up into the sky for whistling kites to grab. You should check out the sounds of the superb Lyre bird

Thanks for reviewing my video, apologies it took so long to comment as I just saw this video. I agree with lots of comments, I really should have included the Lyrebird and numerous others, the issue is we have so many wonderful birds it was hard to include them all. Thanks again, Cheers, Duade

I live 9km from the city centre at Nundah on the Northside of Brisbane. Around my place I often see rainbow and scaly breasted lorikeets, sulphur crested cockatoos, galahs, little corellas, pale headed rosellas, crimson rosellas, King parrots and the occasional red tailed black cockatoo, and yellow tailed black cockatoo. Wow, that’s just the parrots around home! There’s also drongos, kookaburras, rainbow kingfishers, magpies, peewees, butcher birds (which have a visceral hatred of Kookaburras), Willy wagtails, noisy minors, Australian crows, stone curlews, masked plovers, Superb Fairy Wren, Red Backed Fairy Wren, wood ducks, pelicans, Australian Ibis, straw necked ibis, black swans when the local seasonal lagoon is full… And there’s many more I often see but you get the picture. You’ll be amazed at just how many different bird species there are in Australia. Parrots and pigeons first evolved in Australia then spread around the world and we have an enormous number of song birds.

Willie wagtails are awesome little birds, they love to follow you around when mowing the lawn to pounce on any bugs or insects that disturbed by the lawn mower just the way they act is adorable and kinda like they are so proud of themselves

The lyrebird is soo iconic. I wish he had the bird call of half of these birds. Some are so vocal

Hello girls, love your work. I used to live in Canberra (pron "Can -bra"). My wife and I used to feed them so they hung around. I spent a lot of time outdoors rebuilding a car and I am sure ended up as the main entertainment for a few of these birds. The Kookaburras used to sit on power lines watching me and would laugh every time I dropped a tool, skinned by knuckles or hit my head on the car bonnet. The magpies were also a hoot. In Oz you either love them or hate them. They would love walking around close to me inspecting the tools and oily parts. I once had one walk under the car and perch on my stomach looking up into the bottom of the motor to see what I was doing.

We placed feeders outside our bedroom window and every morning twenty plus Lorikeets fly in and treat us to a visual pleasure.

I love kookaburras. I hear their laugh nearly every morning at dawn. Babies sometimes land on my balcony.

…oh, and the Powerful Owl. They are huge and beautiful.

late to the party but I live on a mountain in the south and every morning my backyard is full of Self-Crested Cockatoos, Black Cockatoos, Kookaburras, Rainbow Lorikeets, and Magpies... I highly recommend finding a video with the songs these birds sing - it's a beautiful symphony and a wonderful way to wake up in the morning =)

Our Wedgetail Eagle is bigger than a bald eagle. I see at least half of these birds in my neighbourhood every day on the east coast. It's quite the symphony at dawn and dusk. You should watch a video about Australian bird sounds. There's so many unique ones and I agree with this guy - the magpie warbling is the most beautiful sound though they make other calls too. I also love hearing Bellbirds in the bushland.

I think it's a good list. Around half of these birds are quite often seen in big cities like Sydney. The Cassowary is probably iconic as well, though it lives in the far north, and is probably the world's most dangerous bird - kind of looks like a dinosaur.

List needs to be way longer! Eclectus parrot, rainbow bee eater, scarlet honeyeater, lyrebird, cassowary, kingfisher, rosellas, fruit dove, regent bowerbird, have to hear the green catbird call too... I love our aussie bird variety

I live on the western edge of the Blue Mountains and we see many of these birds in our yard, including Magpies, Sulphur Crested Cockatoos, Gang Gang Cockatoos and many honeyeaters. A bird he didn't mention was the Wattle Bird, which is one of my favourites. Nor did he mention our stunning Rosellas or the magnificent King Parrot. I've known Americans who have been freaked out by the size of our birds.

We have fairey wrens, willy wagtails, sulphur crested cockatoos, black swans, pelicans, plovers, maggies, rainbow lorikeets, bin chickens, spoonbills visit our backyard and the canal we live on often. The bird I think you might enjoy checking out is the "lyre bird".

Hi Ladies! I’m a new subscriber from Down Under! I think it’s ironic that 8m watching your video about our birds, as my husband has gone away on a trip with some people, photographing birds! He will be away for a month! He has already told me had found at least two new species of birds! It his hobby now that he has retired! Thank you for this! Love your channel! Peace and Blessings from Australia.

Id love to see on the list or if you wanna look them up -lyrebird -rosella (there’s is about 4-5 variations of rosella, ect. Eastern, southern) -king parrot -yellow tailed black cockatoo -cassowary -rose ringed parrot -red winged parrot -mulga parrot -Azure Kingfisher -rainbow bee eater -gouildian finch Are some of my favourites!

I had the privilege of hosting a pair of Kookaburras in our yard for 7 years. Got introduced each year to their babies. Np hand feeding (only once a day.) Would come when called. Such beautiful, friendly birds! And a great wake up call in the morning.

Hello ladies. We are blessed with an amazing variety of gorgeous birdlife & tend to take them for granted. I live in the bush & am woken every morning by kookaburras, nature's alarm clock. Years ago we used them laughing jackasses but that term has fallen out of favour. We feed the Rainbow Lorrikeets, crested pigeons & apostle birds every day. The crested lapwing I call a spurwing plover. Every area of Australia has their beautiful species. Most Aussies when they travel overseas are struck by the silence in the forests & scrub in many countries

We have so many awesome birds in Aus. I hope it stays that way for a while longer

The masked lapwing is called a plover in Australia. And when it’s nesting season you don’t dare go outside without a stick.

I was told a story about Willie Wagtails by an indigenous elder when I was a kid. He told me never to tell a secret around a Willie or to speak ill of the dead because the Willie is close to the realm of the dead and he will tell them what you said, as for the secret, they will tell your enemies. I love Willies, they are a regular visitor to my backyard, along with magpies, cockies, galahs and rainbow lorikeets, on the rare occasion a King Parrot appears

My favorites the Pelican and the Cockatoo gorgeous creautures. Thank you for the video mujeres hermosas.

This was an epic video. I am also a huge bird nerd 😊. I have to say my favourite bird was the splendid fairy wren. The robins had incredible colours. The rainbow lorikeets are beautiful too. So many birds to love in Aussie ! Thanks so much ❤

Oh.... Princess Parrot, Superb Parrot, Red Rumped Grass Parrot, Rosellas ...... look up Australian parrots... there are so many. Butcher Birds, Currawongs, Jabiru, many finches...... you'll be in your element Natasha

I have had the privilege of having a Spangled Drongo spend quite a bit of time at my place over a 6 week period. This bird has crests above each eye that run towards its back. Its colour appears black until it gets in the sun and then can reflect blue and green. I like this bird because of its cheeky character and that it always seems happy as it spends most of its time singing. These birds will mimic other bird calls and then mix all these different calls into a beautiful song. King Parrots, Blue faced Honey Eaters, Scarlet Honey Eaters, Rainbow Bee Eaters, Red Rumped Parrots, Blue Wrens, Red Wrens, Different Finches etc are all notable birds we get regularly in South Queensland that are not on this list.

We never get tired of the sound of our birds ( except maybe cockatoos). The chorus starts pre- dawn with the kookaburras, then the magpies, and so-on. It’s not all at once, but each in turn. And always the same order. We have our morning coffee watching the fairy wrens chirping madly while darting around outside our window, sitting on the windowsill. One bird you must look at - not overly beautiful, but the most gorgeous bird call - the Rufous whistler.

Wow, I loved seeing all the new birds. Thanks for making learning fun 😊

Willie wagtail is my grandfathers animal spirit and to my people if the willie wagtail is wagging that tail and singing they’re telling us that someone is or going to pass away. Also the Rosella is an amazingly beautiful bird.

I can think of a few- the cassowary, the native mynah bird, the native raven.... There's a bit of a list to look at! ❤ BTW love you, beautiful ladies and your wonderful friendly channel! From an Aussie admirer❤❤❤

How weird but i was talking to my dad this morning about our Maggies that visit several times a day for food,& said to him how lucky we are in Straya to have the amount of unique birds we have that the rest of the world don't have. I also get Galahs, Kookas, Lorikeets, Rosellas in thd yard for free food &, clean water

I see honey eaters every day - and I get visited by about 20 lorikeets every morning - I also see butcher birds, magpies crows kookaburras other parrots Tawny Frogmouths etc. and I live in the inner north of Brisbane - BTW most emus carry their head about level with a human shoulder but some are much taller

"Willie Wagtail" sounds like a creature from Pickmin 😁

An Aussie here, in South East Queensland - I Live close to bushland - we have magpies that will come into my garage looking for food (Ok, I have a stash of dried mealworms). Sulphur Crested Cockatoos are occasionally pets - I had a friend with one, who would perch on your shoulder, walk down your arm, and then plunge its head into the glass of beer you were drinking - then go hang upside down (drunk) from the clothesline. You sometimes see a flock of 50+ of them We have will wagtails that will come and perch on my hand when gardening. Rainbow Lorikeets - just south of here (at a place called Currumbin) is an animal sanctuary that started out as a bird sanctuary which would have hundreds of them come every day to be hand fed (a mix of bread, milk and honey, as I recall) - prior to the sanctuary opening they would hang out in my Grandfather's back yard, a few miles up the road. Kookaburras, still see them regularly, and you can tempt them with strips of meat - they will grab it, and then whip it against the ground to make sure it's dead (they eat lizards and the like). Someone did a CD with 50 or so Aussie birds - if you search on apple music for "songs of disappearance" or here is a sample on youtube... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-c2M0H9Z1HuQ.html

Powerful owl is the one for me once seen never forgotten.

You need to take a look at a video of our Lyrebird. The sounds they make will blow you away. I feed a family of Magpies & bin chickens. I also have drongos, wattle birds & Willie Wagtails that come to visit.

I live in suburban Sydney & we get quite a few beautiful birds; Lorikeets eat my grapes on my front verandah every season, a residential Tawny Frogmouth, Galahs, Sulphur Crested Cockatoos, Cockatiels, Kookaburras, Masked Lapwings, Bin Chickens, Willy Wagtails, Peewees, Magpies, Superb Fairywrens & many more. My favourite bird songs are the Magpie & Kookaburra. It’s hard not to smile when you hear our laughing bird 😁

Some fun facts to note: Kookaburra is also known as a snake eater because they literally hunt snakes amongst their other prey. They've actually been classified as a member of the kingfisher family. Magpies like most corvids are super intelligent and social. They've been tested solving complex problems like understanding buoyancy and water volume to obtain treats. They also have been clocked remembering up to 100 individual human faces and retaining that recognition fir 20 years. While they're known to commonly terrorise and swoop passers by in nesting season, if you befriend one before nesting season all the magpies in your neighbourhood won't swoop you. They're a highly sociable bird. Wedge tailed eagles are the third largest eagle in the world, and while their head markings might remind you of a juvenile bald eagle, they're significantly larger. In areas where red kangaroos roam (Australia's largest native land mammal where males stand 2 metres tall) the eagles have honed a hunting technique to dive bomb the kangaroo from a great height using their momentum and their 3rd talon to strike and penetrate the back of the skull, crushing the brain stem and killing a full grown dominant male red kangaroo instantly. Rainbow lorikeets are badass birds that even magpies won't mess with. They're known to get into your fruit trees, ripping open the fruit and simply leaving it in the sun to ferment. They come back up to several days later and get stuck into the fermented fruit and become as drunk as lords, hanging off the tree and getting into all sorts of mischief. A flock of drunken rainbow lorikeets is one of the funniest things I've seen. Two rainbow lorikeets destroyed an entire berry tree of mine in a single afternoon. A pity he didn't capture the cassowary, this bird has a fearsome reputation. If you want to see an evolved irritable angry lethal dinosaur, the cassowary is your best bet. You should watch a Davud Attenborough youtube clip on the lyrebird. It has the ability to mimic all sorts of sounds with amazing accuracy.

Thanks ladies I really loved that and my favourite is definitely the Splendid Fairy Wren because of the beautiful blue colour, my least favourite though I didn’t hate it is probably the Magpie. Fantastic video ❤️❤️

The blue wren is a very beautifull common back yard bird along with the rainbow lorrikeet. for the best bird calls you cant go past the lyre bird

I love that American Robin with beautiful brown belly, that's a beautiful bird.

emu's are huge - equivalent of ostrich - can be over 6 foot tall. masked lapwings are also called "plovers" and they suck so hard (I call them the devil spawn choir - because they love to sing at 2am in the morning). kookaburras, parrots are everywhere

❤️ Magpie 🧡 Bin Chicken 💛 Tawny Frogmouth 💛 Willie Wagtail 💙 Fairywren 💜 Kookaburra 🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺

Whenever I leave Australia one of the things I miss the most is the sound of magpies. Kookaburra's are completely iconic and are always wonderful to hear, but maggies are really the sound of Melbourne. If you want to see Galah's and Cockatoo's head to Yarrawonga, literally thousands of them.

I live in a bayside beach suburb about 20 kilometres south west of Melbourne CBD, it is on a huge wetland that streches about 25 kilometres to the south along the bay. We have a huge flock of sulphur crested cockatoos who make the worst racket at sundown, that my 18 month old grandson absolutely loves. We also have a large variety of wrens, magpies (the most beautiful call of all the Australian birds), but watch them, they will swoop you in springtime if you are near their young. In the shallows at the bay beach we have many black swans and pelicans. We have migratory birds to the wetlands, some come from as far as Russia. It is a real treat to live in this part of Melbourne.

I see the majority of these around my area, all beautiful birds, even the ugly one. We also have a few different types of falcons around the place, crested pigeons, corellas and more. I love them all, just fabulous. We take them for granted until we hear others react to them - makes me appreciate them even more.

You asked for the English name for what you call bird nerds. The closest one that I can come up with is the twitchers referring to the habit that they develop of turning their heads or eyes to catch sight of just about any bird, but when word gets around of someone spotting a particularly rare bird for this country the twitchers will turn up en mass just to catch a mere glimpse of a foreign bird, usually this occurs during the hurricane season in the USA and the Caribbean when a bird or two get a strong tailwind and inadvertently arrive on British shores. On rare occasions the twitchers have the luck of seeing a bird that tries to settle down and then the bird spotting clubs will organise a tour bus to travel from all parts of the country just to record another entry in their log’s.

Thanks for another great video 🤘👍

I live in central Victoria and many of this birds visit my garden. The sulphur crested cockatoos are often referred to as the teenagers of the bird world. The fly in large flocks and screech even when in flight! The black cockatoo is magnificent. You must listen to recordings of the lyre bird, magpie, whip bird and kookaburra to really appreciate them. I know there are videos on u-tube. There are so many more for you to check out.

Good spotting on the raptor-like claws on the kookaburra. It's a member of the Kingfishers and eats snakes, lizards, rodents, etc.

If you go to Bald Hill Lookout in Sydney, there are often Crimson Rosellas and Rainbow Lorikeets walking beside you as you sit to enjoy the view of the ocean. I used to live near a lake and black and white swans would chase people away on the footpaths to protect their baby swans. The Ibis is a god in Egypt and you often see the Ibis masks in those fancy masquerade parties, but we call them Bin Chickens the same way you call raccoons Trash Pandas.

Of course he left something out about the magpie! Yes their song is amazing but for about 1/4 of the year they will try their best to kill you!

I live on a farm near the bush, so I get a lot of birds here. I have a pet sulphur crested cockatoo who talks and I feed the wild cockatoos that come here. Occasionally I get a few galahs but also crimson rosellas and maybe the odd wood duck or two! The willy wag tails might be small but they're agressive little bastards, especially against maggies (magpies), kookaburras and even a wedgie (wedge-tailed eagle) or two! Magpies are ok but beware the male magpie during breeding season as they swoop! To stop them swooping, you feed them and don't be aggresive towards them as they have good memories and never forget a face! We also get the fairy wrens around here...usually a male with two or more females.

I have kookaburra's turn up on my backyard fence most days. They're my favourite ☺

Cockatoo's are a beautiful menace. You should find a video of the Cockatoo's causing havoc with bins and destroying houses.

Hi Ladies, as a bird loving Brit, I loved this video especially. We have avocets over here (without the red heads), and a pair of Black Swans visit a local lake every year so I count myself quite fortunate. Several of the other species are available to see at Birdworld in Farnham in Surrey, definitely one of my favourite places to go if I am in the area. Keep up the great work, and catch you on Friday.

I live

In the UK there are many pubs called "The Black Swan", but invariably the locals irreverently refer to the pub as "The Mucky Duck" 😊

We have the willy wag tails, magpies, kookaburras, wrens and a bird that looks like a wild giant blue/green buggies, frog mouths and not a bird but fruit bats. I'm with Debbie bird are pretty from a distance. 😂

love the vid natasha u shud do NZ ZEALAND BIRDS AN LANDSCAPE 🐦🐦🐧🐧

Hey Girls, one of the joys of our birds. My wife and I actually hand feed a family of magpies and on a daily basis feed approximately 100 Rainbow Lorikeets.

As an Aussie, I have to say that I was surprised by the robins - I did not know we had any of those little guys, let alone such a variety! What else I can say about this list? Kookaburra: This guy is the largest of all kingfishers. Apart from their "laughing" call, they are known to prey on smaller snakes and lizards, as well as fish from your backyard fishpond. Magpie: Our Magpies can be quite territorial during their egg hatching season and will frequently attack people passing by the trees they nest in, occasionally causing real injury. Kids sometimes draw decoy "eyes" on the back of their bike helmets if they have to ride past magpies in "swooping" season. Magpies have a beautiful caroling call which means people love them despite their savage dive-bombing habits. Willie Wagtail: This little fella sings long into the night with a delightful yet piercing, musical song. He's also quite territorial and will dart out in front of people walking past HIS singing position. Emu: You asked how tall they are - typically about 1.8 metres (6 ft). Fun fact... The Australian Army went to war against emus in 1932. The emus won. Tawny Frogmouth: Similar to an owl in habit, but they are more closely related to Nightjars. Masked Lapwing: Also called plovers (perhaps incorrectly, but I don't care), these guys can be even more aggressive than our magpies, though they probably cause fewer injuries. With an awful screeching call, these little shits don't even have the saving grace that magpies do. But there are SO MANY other Australian birds which could be called "iconic" for various reasons. Cassowary: (also known as the "murder chicken") This like a "heavy cavalry" version of the emu. A little smaller but much more dangerous than the emu, with a great horny crest and talons that would put any eagle's to shame, seeing this bird leaves you in no doubt that birds really are dinosaurs! Black cockatoo: At around 60 cm (2 ft), the red-tailed version we get up north is much larger than the Southern Yellow-tailed version. Spectacular beauties, they are. Brolga: A species of crane known for its graceful dances. Budgerigar: This tiny little yellow-faced desert parrot is the original wild type of the domestic "budgie" or parakeet. They occur in groups of several thousand all across the Australian outback. Apparently, these groups are called "chatters". Rosella: Another small parrot - far more colourful than the budgerigar, but less so than the lorikeet. Lyrebird: The most remarkable mimic of any bird I know. Appears on the obverse side of our 10 cent coin - it's THAT iconic! Curlew: A nocturnal bird with a call not entirely unlike the bloodcurdling scream of a woman or child that you might hear in a horror movie. Drongo: A relative of the cuckoo whose name has become synonymous with "fool" in Aussie slang. Little penguin: Formerly known as the Fairy Penguin, the nightly return of these flightless marine birds to their burrows is called the "Penguin Parade" and is a major tourist attraction on Phillip Island. Jabiru: Australia's only species of stork. There are many more interesting birds in and around this magnificent island continent, but perhaps not many more that are worthy of the term "iconic".

The video paid homage to the aggressiveness of the Masked Lapwing (Commonly called a Plover) they let you know they are coming in for an attack. The one to look out for is silent death from a Magpie. The first thing you know about an attack (swoop) is the snap of it's beak next to your ear! If you are really unlucky and the Maggie is super aggressive you might have contact on your skull from the super pointy beak or claws. As others have said, make friends with them by feeding them and you won't get swooped...just never ride a pushbike near their nest. Like most Aussie motorists, magpies hate pushbike riders! LOL.

I teared up at the first bird. The blue fairy wren was my late mother's favourite bird. The number of photo's and painting's she had of them was legendary in our family.

dunno about poems about magpies. they’re pretty awesome though. many Aussie’s have personal relationships with their local magpies, butcher birds, kookaburras, minas, and many others. People hand feed them, and magpie parents teach their young how to behave around humans, before they are forced to leave home after helping their parents raise the newest season of young. The wedgetail eagle might look like the juvenile american eagle from a distance but they’ve got a wingspan of over 2m (7ft), and they hunt land mammals. The willy wagtail is one of my favourite birds, it will defend its territory from birds that can be more than 10x their weight. One aboriginal language calls them a “Djiti-Djiti”, which, when said out loud, is exactly how they sound when they make an alarm or territorial call. The Lapwing, also called a plover, is an amazing fighting bird which will actually hit people in the head with their wings that have BONES growing out of them in spurs. They are amazing parents, but due to roads, its not often that you see a parent pair managing to get more than one out of 3/4 chicks into adulthood. Thanks so much for enjoying our birds!

The yellow and also ted tailed black Cockatoo........ The Azure kingfisher........ The cockatiel...... all amazing birds as well

The tawny frogmouth has other names as well, including the mopoke or morpork. These names reflect the sound they make. To me they sound like an actual frog announcing "Mopoke! Mopoke! Mopoke!"

My husband has photographed many aussie birds we have found in our travels. Saw a couple of wedged tailed eagles on our trips over east and back, one flew closely over our car and I saw the talons up close. Amazing but scary, happy to share some of our photos with you guys if you have an email I can send them to.

THE AUSTRALIAN LYREBIRD. STUNNING TO LOOK AT. UNBELIEVABLE TO HEAR.

So happy to come across your channel and I am from southern NYC area and we’ve had mockingbirds terrorize our community for years now with diving at us and following us…not happy this is happening around the north/northeast..but am happy to agree with so much both of you have said and love the pic of your pups so much!

They used the Kookaburra in Jungle movies that is why you think they sound like a monkey

Natasha, in my area on my street in Australia, we have very friendly magpies. We have befriended a magpie family called Bob, Bobette and the juvenile every year is always called New Bob. If you yell “Bob” they’ll sometimes come down for a feed. Sulphur-crested cockatoos fly over my house screaming every evening, it’s certainly a sound. The Lyrebird and the Rosella was missing and they are hella iconic! The Rosella is literally on the front of the biggest selling sauce bottle!

I’m in southern Australia and a great number of those birds frequent my back yard and/or the street. We regularly see or hear galahs, sulphur crested cockies, rainbow lorikeets, magpies, blue wrens, Willy wagtails, plovers(masked lapwing), pelican and ibis. Wedgies are less common but you see the occasional one soaring the skies. Some Australian’s decry the “lack” of fauna we have but it is one of the most biodiverse places on earth. We are lucky to have the numbers we do. Despite our best efforts many still remain!

No list of only 20 birds could possibly cover all the favourites. Just off the top of my head I would add red-tailed and yellow-tailed black cockatoos, eclectus parrot, blue faced honeyeater, spotted pardalot, eastern spine bill, grey fan tail, grey shrike thrush, silver-eye, superb kingfisher, New Holland honeyeater, lyrebird, bush stone curlew and cassowary. BTW, to answer your question an emu stands around 6 ft high. Also, the wedge tailed eagle is the eagle with the world's largest recorded wing span.

So much of what makes Aussie birds amazing can't be captured well in a single photograph such as their unique calls and behaviours. Some of my faves are the corvids and related families - locally we get Magpies, Little Ravens, choughs, butcher birds and seasonally migrating Grey Currawongs, with Maggies definitely the most common (my walk to town - roughly 1 US mile - passes through 5 different family territories). As the video mentioned, Magpie caroling is a truly amazing sound, but they are also highly intelligent and social. Like crows, they can recognise human faces and with a little work it is possible to befriend them. Watching a family group play around comfortably in your presence is really rewarding (some great videos out there of this such as the magpie whisperer). A personal example, a magpie accidentally flew into the work lunchroom and started to panic when it couldn't get through the windows. Luckily, my (very poor) attempts at magpie noises helped calm it to the point it was more curious than scared and I was able to guide it out with hand gestures. Getting on their good side is worth it, because in the spring they can be highly aggressive to anyone they perceive as a threat. Normally it's a close fly by from behind, maybe a loud clack of the beak as they pass your ear, but they do sometimes make contact and those beaks pack quite a hit to the back of the head. Some local governments will list maps of areas where particularly aggressive magpies are nesting. Lots of videos out there of people being plagued by "swooping" season and some very creative headware as countermeasures. As for intelligence, one of my favourite examples was a study where they "tried" to track the movements of magpies in a large urban park. Unfortunately for the researchers, one of the birds worked out how to unfasten the tracker in under 15 minutes. In short order, it shared what it learnt and the experiment was a write-off. Another group worth a deeper look are the various cockatoo's. Have spotted 3 or 4 different varieties migrating through this area. As the video mentioned, their 'screeching' is unpleasant. Up close, large flocks can be deafening. But at a distance, it is an iconic ambiance. One interesting features of cockatoos is their longevity - it varies by species but it is common for them to live 40-50 years in the wild and up to a century in captivity. Like many large parrots they are seriously intelligent, creative in use of claw and beak to solve problems. A local anecdote - much of their native food sources in my area were lost to agriculture and urban development, so they adapted to cracking pine cones of introduced species to get at the nuts. I've heard people swear that cockatoos will aim for people walking below as they drop half chewed pine cones.

This guy has pictures of most of the common Australian birds that I see. Including all my favourites, The Magpie, Kookaburra, Plover (Masked Lapwing) Ibis, Willie Wagtail, Cockatoos and Pelicans. The Pelicans are just majestic as the way they sit, swim and take off and land, they're impressive in every move they make. The Kookaburra's call is common in rural areas. We live rural and they live around here and the best thing about them is they keep the snake numbers down. My two favourites are the Magpie and the Plover (Masked Lapwing) Simply because they are everywhere and how they are so protective of their young. The Magpie's call is very melodic and it's hilarious when you are sitting in a park and there's a couple of magpies nearby and one is a baby (you can tell by it's immature grey feathers) and it's squawking really loudly at it's Mother and she's running around collecting food an rushing over and ramming it into the baby's mouth. The Plovers are on nearly every corner in towns and suburbs, they nest in grass on the ground and their little furball babies are adorable. This is much more successful than you'd imagine, as there are Plovers everywhere in Australia. The Plovers don't get that close when they swoop, not like the Magpies, which frequently terrorize people with how close they get when they swoop. But it's a natural instinct to protect their young and I respect that. We do have great birds here in Australia. One bird not seen in the video is the Blue-faced Honeyeater. We have a few around here and they really are gorgeous. But from my observation they are very mean and bossy birds.

Where I used to live I had a gumtree outside of my window. Everyday Ii would wake up to Rainbow Lorrilkeets feeding. I miss them. 🌈

So, so many beautiful birds here in Australia. I have a fondness for birds as well. I've got an unusual bird on my favourites list called Bush Stone Curlew. A mainly nocturnal bird that has a haunting call.