Ibis are often seen feeding on food dumped by humans, but citizen scientists are increasingly reporting the native species is dining out on toxic cane toads.
Gold Coast coordinator of Watergum's Cane Toads program Emily Vincent said the "stress and wash" method had been viewed numerous times by citizen scientists.
"It's quite amusing to watch and it's quite different from other native species and their methods of eating them," she said.
"The ibis will pick up cane toads and they will flick them about and stress out the toads.
"What this does is it makes the cane toads release toxins from the parotoid gland at the back of their neck, which is their defence mechanism when they're faced with predators.
"Then they'll take them down to the creek and wash them."
Ms Vincent said it was encouraging to see the ibis capitalising on the food source, which was first introduced into Australia in 1935 to control cane beetles in Queensland's sugarcane crops.
The cane toad has since spread into New South Wales, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
"We have lots and lots of ibis in Australia," she said.
"This is a learned behaviour and it's been observed in multiple different regions.
"I think it will have an impact, especially as more species tag along and copy the behaviour."
Toxin not so bad for birds
Macquarie University biology professor Rick Shine said he had heard of ibis eating cane toads, but was unaware of the "stress and wash" technique.
"It certainly would be a quite effective way of getting rid of the toxin from a cane toad's shoulder glands," Professor Shine said.
"Birds are smart and there may be all kinds of clever stuff going on there, but the simple reality is the toxins of cane toads are not particularly dangerous for most birds."
Professor Shine said other bird species had also developed techniques of eating toads by avoiding the shoulder glands.
"They quite frequently will eat out the tongue of the toad and sometimes flip it over and eat out some of the belly skin and parts of the innards," he said.
"It seems the birds can actually taste the toxin and it tastes awful."
The Sydney-based evolutionary biologist and ecologist said more research needed to be done on the cane toad and their native predators.
"It's certainly true that we don't have a lot of information about it," Professor Shine said.
"It's a terrific opportunity for citizen scientists to get involved.
"I have no way of knowing how many cane toads are being gobbled up by ibis, but it certainly happens."
Balance restoring
Professor Shine said the introduction of invasive species often led to a population boom followed by a decline in numbers.
"One of the reasons that happens is the native species work out how to deal with them," Professor Shine said.
"We have lots of rodents, that's the native rats and house rats, that can eat cane toads.
"It's absolutely true that the system comes back into some kind of a balance and we have native predators getting to exploit this new food source."
The academic said cane toads were a problem species and large native predators, including goannas, could be scarce in areas where cane toads were present.
Maligned bird
The Australian White Ibis is a common sight in many Australian towns and cities and is often referred to as a 'bin chicken' because of its varied diet.
Watergum's Emily Vincent said the native bird played an important role in the ecosystem.
"They do have rather an unfair rap," she said.
"Ibis have just adapted really well to urbanisation and they utilise what we've put there when we destroyed their previous habitat.
"So it's actually really pleasing that we can share this information about them and start to present the ibis in a different light."
