Bird of the year - Tawny Frogmouth
The Tawny Frogmouth Podargus strigoides has today been voted as the bird of the year in an open poll ran by the Guardian/BirdLife Australia. This the first year it has won the contest, although it has been runner up three times, in 2019, 2021 and 2023.This follows on from the bird being declared as the most Instagrammable bird in 2021 by a German study that found the bird had a high number of likes although it featured in a low number of posted photographs. The two chicks shown year are birds of the year. They were photographed yesterday with their dad in an old White-winged Chough nest that the parents chose for their nest site this year, rather than the usual fork in a horizontal branch. The chicks are about three weeks old and very inquisitive. They goggle at humans as they pass by below, oblivious of their presence as the birds keep still and rely of their cryptic camouflage for protection from predators.
The chicks' front-facing eyes, bright yellow, wide and ever-watching, are especially appealing to human emotions, but to a predator, they are a giveaway to their location. A few weeks after they fledge, they stare less and adopt the typical cryptic pose illustrated in other Tawny Frogmouth pages in this blog.
I have studied these birds for over twenty years and never tire of finding them, watching them, and following their breeding success in hot, dry, wet and windy years. Every frogmouth day is a happy day.
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