For two months, we called it Strange Bird.
We had moved into a new home in the summer. A tightly packed street in Sydney’s inner west, where gardens are small, nature strips absent and the cement footpath is broken up by fledgling trees around which residents plant small squares of flowers and creepers. It was here, almost immediately, that we encountered a lone, large bird.
I had never seen a creature like it.
It has a leathery-skin head, too small for its bulbous body, as though it has been smeared with bright white clay. A splash of bright red on its beak melts, like crayon, over its rubbery tiny jowls. It is a bird which looks directly descended from the dinosaurs.
It paced up and down our street, in the silent way of walking birds. In and out of front gardens, around parked cars, in front of moving ones. “Hi, Strange Bird,” we’d say as we passed it on our way.
As people visited, or we met our neighbours, Strange Bird would inevitably arise in conversation. Ah, you’ve got that bird on your street, said a friendly woman walking a dog. Oh, that bird, I know, laughed the woman two doors down. What is that? Most people said it was a brush turkey but I do know brush turkeys and this was not one. A friend who seemed to know about these things said it was a peahen. I Googled it. Not a peahen.
One day, as I left for a lunchtime walk, Strange Bird was crossing the road. The charm of its mystery had worn off; I wanted to find out what it actually was, and so I began to follow it. It picked up its pace and walked around a parked 4WD; as we arrived on the same side of the car it shot a quick glance back with its side-head eye, and continued on faster – as though trying not to look alarmed, but definitely alarmed. Twice we circled the car in this manner. Facing a third silent lap chasing a walking bird around a vehicle I stopped, and took a photo as Strange Bird crossed to the other side.
Bird Twitter, what the hell ia this? It lives on my new street, and I’ve tried to romantically call if Strange Bird for a month, but now I need to know pic.twitter.com/9HhTsw3nOt
— Celina Ribeiro (@Celina_Ribeiro_) February 17, 2023
Not knowing what else to do, I posted the picture to Twitter. What is this bird?
Immediately responses came back. “That is a guineafowl – and it’s a long way from home.”
***
The spotted guineafowl was indeed some way from home. It is an African game bird, and evolutionarily not altogether far from dinosaurs (it’s the second-oldest strand of bird). But it’s not a migratory bird, and it should live in flocks. In fact, once a guineafowl finds a mate, it couples for life. Mostly in Australia they are kept as an avian guard dog on small holdings or rural properties. But here it was, this one solitary bird, stalking the cement and bitumen of a city half a world away from its home. How had it got here? To whom – if anyone – did it belong? Had it escaped? And was it, he, lonely?
At first, the mystery of the origins of Strange Bird became a household obsession. But soon he faded into the background. “Morning, Strange Bird,” we’d still greet the stalking creature, though it had become an unremarkable part of the day, like checking the mail. Strange Bird continued to ignore us.
“The more I think about it, the more I think it’s been dumped,” Dr Holly Parsons, from BirdLife Australia, tells me over the phone.
Parsons is not a guineafowl specialist – few exist in this country – but she says the birds, when they are kept in Australia, are most often kept on properties. Their strange and loud garbled cry makes them excellent alarm systems. But it also makes them annoying. And inappropriate for cities, where often local councils have regulations against keeping roosters and the like. So Parson’s theory is that Strange Bird was an annoying bird, an indiscreet bird, and someone has dumped it on our street.
The funny thing is, I’ve only heard Strange Bird’s bizarre turkey-like call once in all the days I have lived near him. Strange Bird is quiet.
There have been a few wild guineafowl city sightings, Parsons says. But not many. “If it’s been around a while, it’s doing quite well given the foxes that are around.”
***
A new playground opened up on our street a few weeks ago. The council put on a bit of a party – free ice-cream and coffee and such. By the face painting queue, I got chatting to my neighbour from two doors up. Finally, I remembered to ask: what’s the go with that guineafowl? “Oh, Spotty!” she replied.
Two years ago, she told me, the bird appeared on the street. No one knows from where, or why. But the residents, so taken with its peculiarity and solitude, began to feed it. She and her children left crushed Weet-Bix out in the morning for him. It seemed that to everyone in the neighbourhood he had been a curiosity, a brief point of conversation, a small oddity roaming in an otherwise desperately ordinary street.
It didn’t, she thought, belong to anyone. It had just showed up. And it continued to survive – alone and silent.
She had one clue, though. Not about Strange Bird’s origins but about it’s survival.
The man on the corner with the lemon trees. Friendly, but a little bit gruff if you parked in his driveway. One evening as Strange Bird stood on top of his Colorbond fence, the man opened his side gate and gave a couple of clicks out the side of his mouth. Through the slight opening of the gate she saw a pile of cloth and things the man had clearly pulled together himself. A nest.
