Australia’s geographic isolation has given us an incredible ecosystem, teeming with rich and diverse wildlife found nowhere else in the world. From our iconic, unique monotremes to our gaudy and obnoxious galahs, Australia’s animals are an important part of what makes this country so special.
Some of them, however, are complete deadshits. Ornithologists all over the world agree that Australia has some of the grubbiest, filthiest trash birds in existence, and that even our subspecies of common birds found globally rank amongst the shittiest, nastiest of their kind.
No park, beach or public area is safe from these feathered rats, who patrol the skies and infest the land, ever searching for garbage to eat or tourists to harass. While all of them are terrible, some of these flying vermin are far worse than others. After consulting with the nerds at SBS Science (or did we?), we’ve ranked these shifty airborne dickheads from least to most feral.
5. Seagull
Habitat: Beaches, wharves, fish and chip shop parking lots
While seagulls can be found more or less anywhere there is sand and water, Australia’s seagulls are the grubbiest in the world. Empowered by centuries of complacent beachgoers, these unscrupulous assholes gather in huge flocks around picnics and will make a grab at a prawn cutlet or potato scallop the moment they see they’ve exited a human’s field of vision.
Highly sophisticated hunters, they have been known to stand on one leg and pretend to be amputees for the purpose of distracting humans, allowing other members of the flock to more easily access the chips they so crave.
4. Pigeon
Habitat: Skyscrapers, public parks, underneath and on top of gargoyles
If God is real (he is), he was clearly distracted when he made pigeons. Useless, ubiquitous and noisy but completely non-threatening, pigeons are essentially the gamers of the natural world. Unable to live in the wild due to their complete lack of hunting skills or motivation, pigeons appeared on the planet some time after the construction of the first skyscraper, and quickly spread to the rest of the world in search of different kinds of breadcrumbs to unsuccessfully peck at.
Australia’s pigeons are amongst the laziest and most irritating in the world - even stupider than European and American pigeons, but with a tendency to gather in bigger, more annoying herds. While completely ineffective as individuals, pigeons will use their sheer force of numbers to control entire food courts, surviving on the cold McDonald’s French fries that they spend hours trying to get into their tiny, dumb beaks.
3. Magpie
Habitat: Parks, playgrounds, schools, ovals, anywhere people with unprotected skulls have fun
The song of the magpie and the terror they induce when you walk through their territory are uniquely Australian. These birds might be loved as a symbol of our nation, but they are hated, reviled and feared as essentially winged terrorists.
Scientists have found that the only thing a magpie truly loves is making a child on a bicycle wet themselves with fear after being mercilessly swooped by these black and white monsters. There are many techniques that can be used to trick the birds, but, during swooping season, the only foolproof approach is to make peace with your sins and your life, and embrace the painful death that will almost certainly greet you if you attempt to cut through the park on the way home.
2. Bush turkey
Habitat: piles of leaves, piles of refuse, on top of mounds
While the turkey of North America is a splendid, handsome bird that makes the centrepiece of an important seasonal meal, the turkeys of Australia are hideous, bottom-feeding monstrosities that surely could only have been designed by HR Giger.
Feeding entirely on worms, sticks and bits of plastic it finds on the road, the bush turkey subdues its prey by staring them down with the two lifeless eyes sunk deep into its disgusting, leathery, scrotal face. Lacking only limited flight capabilities, bush turkeys thrive in urban environments, where they are able to leap from building to building, waiting to spot unsuspecting victims to give one of their very many diseases to.
1. Ibis
Habitat: skip bins, wheelie bins, the tip
Revered as sacred in ancient Egypt, the ibis is, by a distant margin, the grubbiest and most horrible bird on our beautiful island home. Subsisting entirely on a diet of whatever they can snatch out of the hands of unsuspecting humans, the ibis can use its long, curved beak to grab a food item as big as a large sausage roll or small hamburger moments before the item reaches its purchaser’s mouth.
Thanks to its deplorable lack of hygiene, any food touched by the beak of the ibis will be too filthy to be recovered and eaten by a human, allowing the ibis to attempt to somehow get a sausage roll into its tiny throat at its own leisure.
Thanks to its parasite-infested, stringy meat, the ibis has no known predators, and ornithologists predict they could well be the dominant species on the continent by 2025.
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