Runner Up

The Bird of the Year is the Superb Fairywren. My favourite, the Tawny Frogmouth, came second. It was a close run thing, 13,335 votes to 13,999.
 
Tawny Frogmouths mate for life and they can live for about fourteen years. For several years a pair used to visit a tree outside our back gate. Sometimes they were accompanied by others which we took to be children (extra). They would stay for a couple of weeks, just around Christmas, and then disappear again. As far as I know they are not migratory so I don’t know why we were honoured with this brief annual visit.
 
Tawny Frogmouths are endearing because they are so odd. They are not owls, although they look like owls. In fact they are most closely related to nightjars. Their scientific name is Podargus strigoides. Some say that ‘Podargus’ means ‘Walking like a man with gout’, a reference to their lack of owl-like talons and their awkward walk. ‘Strigoides’ means Owl-like (but not an owl). Actually what Tawny Frogmouths most resemble is a broken off piece of dead branch, a most effective camouflage.
 
Tawny Frogmouths have a range of sounds, all of them odd. They have a low booming sound, and another that sounds like a dog barking. Most unnervingly, sometimes they cry – a continuous penetrating whimper that can go on for hours. I have seen reports of a Tawny Frogmouth crying for days after her mate was killed by a car, and of a young Frogmouth crying all night after being expelled from the family group.
 
The last time our pair was here, in 2018, they were accompanied by what we took to be a child. The parents sat snuggled up together on their usual branch. The youngster was banished to another tree where it sat and cried forlornly, for hours and hours. Of course this may be no more than sentimental anthropomorphising. Maybe, but at the time it seemed quite clear that the kid was being pushed out into the world, and it didn’t want to go. It was heartrending.
 
In 2019 and 2020 we watched for them again, but they never came. Those were years of drought and fires and maybe they perished. I would love them to come back.

Photographs by MountGrace.