Animal Diaries Archive

Our birds are going off!

3 December 2004

Bopping, break-dancing brolgas... You should hear these guys! Every morning and afternoon the commotion that our six busy brolgas make is simply awesome.

The trumpeting whoops and hollers that resonate from the Wetlands are enough to make your hair stand on end. Sometimes you have to fight the urge not to run home screaming 'the Indians are coming!'.

Seriously though, if you are in the Wetlands when the brolgas 'go off', you're going home with a story to tell; especially now that our latest arrivals Fred and Ginger have settled in, and accompany Bruce, Marilyn, Elvis and Woodstock in their daily ruckus.

Speaking of Elvis, we had better give you the rundown on our resident rockin' boy brolga with the cool moves who whipped Woodstock off her feet when he arrived. You should see the grooving these two get up to when the wind gets up and the mood takes hold.

Elvis is a strapping young bloke who landed here from Taronga Zoo in Sydney, NSW. He has been with us for almost spot on two years now. He has spent this time wining and dining Woodstock and if all his sweet-talking pays off, we hope one day we'll have more brolgas to join in the raiding parties down in the wetlands.

To wrap up our weekly update, we would like to inform you of another new arrival to our ever-growing bird collection. This week a superb specimen of a sacred kingfisher has landed on our doorstep from Healseville Sanctuary in Victoria. This bloke is a treat, and we have called him Jetson.

Before we go off with the birdies, just thought you would like to know our Red-collared Lorikeets have been at it again. We are delighted to tell you we have two young chicks to boast about. These two have also been earmarked for the free-flight show. So do drop in, catch the BirdsLIVE show and hopefully you will be amazed, and go home with an appreciation of their beauty and a realisation of the plight of our native Australian parrots.