‘I felt like a bird god’: why comedian Geraldine Hickey is excited for this year’s Aussie Bird Count

‘Birds are great,’ Geraldine Hickey says. ‘You think you’ve seen them all, and you’ve barely touched the surface of how many there are’ Photograph: Geraldine Hickey

In early October the comedian Geraldine Hickey went looking for tawny frogmouths, a charismatic bird with a frog-like beak and mottled feathers.

“They’re a good-looking bird,” Hickey says, though it hasn’t yet appeared in her annual bird calendar, a project she started as a “lockdown thing” that has gained its own dedicated audience.