Bird of the Week
Episodes
Old Mate Nate Goes Birding With A Baby
05 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
I've never really been a birder myself. Birding, twitching, getting out in the field and tracking down a bird isn't an activity I've ev...
The World's Most Boring Bird
28 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The show still exists! We are back and this time we are looking at maybe the world's most boring bird, the House Sparrow. These little brown bird...
The Three Wackiest Birds
28 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are going to look at three birds that I think are some of the strangest in the world. Ah... I don't have much more to say about the epis...
Clever Cocky
22 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo is one of the most instantly recognisable Australian birds. Big, loud and mischievous. Some people love them, some people...
Bird Guy has a Hot Take on Electoral Systems
25 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episodes is not about birds. This is about Australia's electoral system. How's that for coming out of left field? Why is Bird Guy talki...
The Bird that Swallowed a Dog
27 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Pelicans! Giant, big beaked birds of the water. Urban legends surrounded these critters, like the fact that they will sometimes eat dogs. Fact or myth...
Lying Lyres
24 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Many birds mimic the calls of other birds. But there is no bird that has the repertoire of the Lyrebird, renown for being some of the greatest mimics ...
Billy Murray, Charlie, His Angels, and the Case of the Mish-mashed Bird
04 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
You know what film doesn't get talked about enough? Charlie's Angels (2000). But wait, this show isn't about middling films from two de...
The Laughing Jackass
18 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Kookaburra has to be one of Australia's most famous birds, with a call so iconic and strange that it has been used in a whole swarth of Holly...
The World's Most 'Dangerous'(?) Bird
05 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Bird is back, and we are back looking at a bird with a reputation for being the world's most dangerous. Maybe in a shock twist the bird with ...
The War on Sparrows
18 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today we welcome back friend of The Bird, Mr David Clay, as we discuss that one time China tried to eliminate all the sparrows in their nation. Did th...
When a Stork Calls
22 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Bird of the Week special announcement: there is a baby on the way so there's no better time to talk about Storks and what they have to do with ba...
Power of Flight Part 2
09 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In our follow up episode on avian flight we dive deeper into the question of how birds get into the air. In part two we look at the machinery birds ha...
Power of Flight Part 1
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Flying is basically the most defining thing about what birds do, and yet I've never really spoken about it. Well no more, today we begin the miss...
Albatross
24 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Wow, does this podcast even release episodes anymore? Yes it does, and we are back with Albatross, renown as some of the biggest birds in the world. M...
Bird Myths Debunked
19 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
I'm sure we've all heard some fun facts about birds, a duck's quack won't echo, an Ostrich sticks its head in the sand when threat...
How to Feed Wild Birds
28 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Who among us hasn't thrown a chip at a seagull or a slice of bread at a duck? Feeding birds is a wonderful way to interact with our feathered fri...
Escargot and the Kite
07 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Eagles are majestic animals, fearsome apex predators that hunt large prey. But then their is that one Kite that only eats snails, the Snail Kite. Toda...
A Flamboyance of Flamingos
13 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Flamingos are kinda freaky. They are a pink, stork-like bird that eats algae and feeds its chicks blood red milk. What is going on with that? Luckily ...
Impressions of New Zealand
16 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
I recently visited New Zealand, and I had a great chance to see some of their unique birds and travel the country a little. And I came away from the t...
Australian Bird Quiz
02 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We interrupt our usual format to bring you a slightly different episode. It's an Australian bird quiz, pretty straight forward, play along at hom...
Patriot Parrots
09 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the last episode we said there were no parrots in the United States of America. But that was only a half truth. A better truth would have been to s...
Parrots
24 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Have you been hankering for a cracker, well has polly got one for you today as we look at Parrots. This is a big old family of birds, so join me as we...
My Grandmother and the Budgerigar
06 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This will be a different episode. I have also had a strong association between my grandmother and Budgerigars, she owned one and gifted me one of my o...
The Unicorn Bird
15 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sadly our world is not populated with magical unicorns. But what we lack in horned horses we make up for with horned birds. Join me this week as we me...
The Sparrow, the Moon and the Emu-wren
28 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1960s the United States of America lost a unique sub-species of bird when the Kennedy Space Centre was developed as part of the space race. Tod...
Lazarus Rising
21 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
So if it's one thing we know people are good at it's making other things go extinct. We are living during one of the great mass extinct even...
Bird of the Century
08 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Last year New Zealand crowned the Puteketeke as their Bird of the Century. This raise a lot of questions: who has the authority to name a bird for the...
Christmas Robin
23 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As we enter the festive season there is no better bird to feature than the European Robin. These bright little birds have an association with Christma...
The Night Parrot Scandal
11 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Night Parrot is known as one of the most elusive birds in the world. Between 1912 and 1990 there was no evidence that they lived, and even then it...
Australia's Extinct Birds
26 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It's a common story throughout the world: when people turn up we tend to kill things, with many animals being driven to extinction. So join me to...
TAXONOMY!
11 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We finally got to the TAXONOMY episode. Join me as we explain what taxonomy is, how it works, and how we use it to arrange a big old family tree that ...
Kiwis: Fruit, People, Birds
14 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Without a question, the Kiwi is one of the most unusual birds in the world. A lifetime of isolation on New Zealand has lead to a bird that is doing an...
The Five Cosmo Birds
25 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
So birds can fly, and as result they have spread themselves every corner of the world. And yet, despite this fact, very few individual species have ma...
Puffin Time
28 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It's time to talk Puffins. The auks are a fascinating group of ocean going birds. They have fancy plumes, fancy beaks, some of them even smell li...
Bird Song
08 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A bird's ability to sing has long fascinated and enchanted we people. But how do birds sing, do all birds sing and why do they sing? These are im...
How Much Wood Can a Woodpecker Peck?
18 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are meeting the Woodpeckers, those chisel faced birds that spend all day banging their head into a tree, sounds frustrating. Well as it turns...
The Rooster that Committed Heresy
04 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There is a famous Swiss case from 1474 of a rooster that was put on trial for the unnatural crime of laying an egg. It is a silly story of human folly...
Fake Wrens
15 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Who doesn't love a Wren? They're adorable stub-tailed birds with beautiful voices. But wait! Are we talking about the same bird? As it turns...
Three Strange Names
29 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A slightly different episode to look at three birds with odd names. We will look at how the Turkey, the Jamaican Mango and the Gouldian Finch got thei...
The Egg War
16 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Egg War is the rather bizarre story of how a colony of Common Murres on the Farallon Islands off the coast of San Francisco sparked conflict durin...
How do Eggs Work?
27 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Eggs may be an every day mundane thing. Something that lives in your fridge and that you see all the time. And yet, they are little marvels of nature....
The Things We Do To Chickens
29 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This is Part II of our story on the Chicken. In this episode we will find out how the Chicken was domesticated, and how we changed them to suit our ne...
The World's Most Delicious Bird
22 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the world today there are some 20 billion chickens. They are the most abundant bird in the world, and almost all of them exist to feed us people. T...
More Reasons to Love Pigeons
05 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Long time listeners may remember our episode on pigeons, where I tried to convince two friends that pigeons are amazing. But that episode only looked ...
The Birds of Norfolk Island
14 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
You know me, I love me a good island, and Norfolk Island is a good island. I recently did a short talk on the birds of Norfolk Island, and I thought, ...
How do Birds Sleep?
26 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Because sleep is something we all do it is understandable that we might think the experience would be similar for other animals. And birds have develo...
Bowerbirds - Avian Architects
05 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Nowhere in the avian kingdom is there another bird that makes a structure as amazing as the Bowerbirds. But why do they do it? Why, to impress the lad...
Owls: Who Gives a Hoot?
06 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Who are the Owls? They are the ninjas of the night, swooping on silent wings to snatch their preys. They have a range of unique attributes that allows...
Spooky Birds
14 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Our two week late Halloween special. Join me for a quick romp to meet five birds with some creepy vibes. To support Bird of the Week and gain access ...
The Nest Review
27 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today we're going to talk about nests. What are, how are they made, what's their deal? Also, how does each type of nest design compare to th...
The Great Emu War
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Maybe you've heard of the Great Emu War, popularly known as that time Australia declared war on a bird, and lost. But what is the real story? Was...
Flightless Birds
14 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For birds, flight is their whole schtick. To come across a bird that doesn't fly gives us pause. Flight gives a bird so many advantages, why woul...
Let's Go Cuckoo
23 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In part two of our exploration of the parasites of the bird world we meet the brood parasites: the birds that lay their eggs in other birds' nest...
Parasite Bird
07 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When we think of parasites we're more likely to think of a mosquito or a leech, some gross bug that latches onto you and sucks your blood. We wou...
Where'd all my Vultures go?
23 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
They may not be the prettiest bird flapping about, but the humble vultures plays an incredibly important role in their ecosystem, performing waster re...
Murray-Darling Basin Bird Breeding Bonanza
22 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Murray-Darling Basin is an important ecosystem in Australia that supports thousands of birds and this year there has been a bird breeding boom, th...
Magpies are murder birds, change my mind
08 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
There are few Australian birds as famous as the Magpie. They are famous/infamous for exactly two things: their beautiful song and their murderous na...
The Great Auk
12 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Last time we met the Penguins, and learned that they are almost totally confined to the Southern Hemisphere. Despite how perfect it would be, there ar...
Penguin Extravaganza!
19 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Penguins are one of the least bird-like birds getting around. We're told we should never judge a fish by its ability to fly, but this is a bird t...
The Great Feather Heist Part II
03 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
One summer night in June 2009, Edwin Rist broke into the Tring natural history museum and stole nearly 300 preserved birds worth some quarter of a mil...
The Great Feather Heist Part I
23 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
One summer night in June 2009, Edwin Rist broke into the Tring natural history museum and stole nearly 300 preserved birds worth some quarter of a mil...
Avian Sugar Junkies
07 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ever wanted to know everything there is know about Hummingbirds? Good news, this is your one-stop shop for all things humming. Notes:Buff-tailed Sic...
A Special Announcement
08 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We interrupt your normal podcast to bring you a special announcement. Bird of the Week is changing how it is delivered. Too many people want birds and...
Migration Part II
19 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Last time we learned about how birds preform their great feats of migration. This week we learn about the long scientific history and the many experim...
The Heck's Migration?
05 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We all know that birds fly south for the winter ... unless you're in the southern hemisphere, then they fly north. But for for a migrating bird i...
The Six Birds of Christmas
23 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The 12 Days of Christmas is an old yuletide favourite, doubly so because of all the birds in its lyrics. But the history of this song is rather long a...
Pigeons Are Disgusting, Change My Mind
08 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There is maybe no bird more polarising than the pigeon. While some people (me) look at these city-dwelling birds and see perfection in avian form, oth...
How Do Birds Get Their Names?
13 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The fact that birds have names is an incredibly handy thing. Instead of just pointing and making a grunting noise every time a pretty bird flies by we...
How Many Birds Are There?
22 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Take a step out your front door and you'll be instantly confronted with many species of bird. But have you ever wondered, just how many different...
The Lost Birds-of-Paradise
28 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today we know of 42 Birds-of-Paradise, but if we went back to 1930, there were nearly 60 in the family. So where did those 20 or so birds go? They are...
The Birds-of-Paradise
06 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In New Guinea there is a family of birds that has captured the imagination of naturalists and ornithologists for hundreds of years. They are the Birds...
A Tale of Two Islands
23 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Thanks to their isolation and unique conditions, islands tend to boast a wide array of biodiversity found nowhere else on earth. But while this makes ...
Island Bird
05 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Birds come in all shapes and sizes, but once a bird gets on an island all bets are off. They are a hotbed of avian biodiversity, and in this episode w...
The Tristan Albatross
30 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On a windswept, rain-drenched spit of land in the Atlantic Ocean lives the Tristan Albatross. They're a majestic bird that has landed itself in a...
The Heck's ... Intelligence?
17 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From language and tool use, to social learning and trickery, there's almost no limit to the fancy feats of avian mental gymnastics. Can they beat...
The Heck's a Nest?
27 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Just what is a nest and why do birds make them? Join us as we explore the strange world of avian construction.
The Heck's a Feather?
01 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What is a feather and what can it do? Spoiler alert, it's a lot more than just flying.
The Heck's a Bird? Part II
29 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Last time we asked 'what is a bird'? This time we're going even deeper. We're taking a tour of the 10,000 species of birds flip-fl...
The Heck's a Bird?
28 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Just what is a bird? We're going on a romp to Bavaria to find out.