Sean Dooley

Because why can't they be at the car park when you start the walk?

But they need you to actually do the hard yards and then they will deign to show themselves to you.

But you have to actually put in the effort.

Yeah, I love, up your way, Jonah, the last time I was in Cairns, in the car park at the Esplanade, like, bushstone curlews actually occupy a space.

Like, they actually sit in a car parking space perfectly straight.

Like, they've actually, I think they're accomplished parkers.

I didn't see whether it reversed in or not, but it's, yeah, it's pretty incredible.

Yeah, this is a question that many researchers and scientists have been wondering too.

And we have many theories and even some proof that those theories might have substance.

But the answer really is we don't know for sure.

But it's probably most likely a combination of many factors, including the ones that we've thought of and investigated.

So I'll briefly run through a couple of them.

One theory is that birds can hear infrasound, that subsonic sound that's beyond the range of humans.

And the theory is that birds, say like pelicans, can hear thunderstorms

in from thousands of kilometers away and that they, they actually, because they have generations and this is the other thing we, we sort of look at it as a instantaneous thing.

Like it rained a few weeks ago and now there are birds here.

How did they know in that moment?

But you've got to remember that they're drawing on thousands of generations of birds that have come before them and have known how the continent works.

So that's something we still can't really grapple with, that sense of big tide.

There is that thought that they hear that infrasound of distant storms and might respond to that after an appropriate amount of time.