Aussies impressed by bird's clever hiding tactics
A group of people walked past one of the tawny frogmouths recently completely 'oblivious' of its presence.
Aussies have been in awe of tawny frogmouth birds after recent sightings showcased their incredible camouflage ability, doing one simple thing that makes them convincingly resemble "dead pieces of wood".
Rob Paule was lucky to spot one of the native birds in Tuerong, Victoria last week and watched it quietly move into the perfect camouflage position while perched on top of a tree branch, as a group of people wandered past, "oblivious" to the bird above them.
He snapped a picture of the tawny frogmouth in action, with the bird barely visible against the tree bark as it elongated its head backwards and blended into its surroundings.
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Another recent sighting by a resident in Jesmond, NSW demonstrated the birds' strong ability to go undetected, with the woman speaking to a friend in her driveway metres away from where a tawny frogmouth stood motionless on top of her shed.
Native birds are more 'common' than Aussies think
Sean Dooley from BirdLife Australia told Yahoo News the birds are much more "common" than people think, inhabiting local parks and trees in busy inner city suburbs. However, they often go undetected due to their impressive hiding abilities.
"They don't nest in hollows or caves or anything, they actually sit out on branches so their strategy is to look as much like a piece of dead wood as possible," Dooley explained. "And by doing that pose, stretching out, they often look much more like, you know, the top of a branch that has been snapped off."
The birds often do this pose when they deem a predator is close by.
"Sometimes they'll do that when there's a potential threat around... even though they look like they've got their eyes closed [in the pictures] it's more than likely that they're actually looking at the observer through the slits in their eyes."
Often mistaken as owls, tawny frogmouths are evolutionally more akin to hummingbirds and have adapted well to urban areas, with the birds found "right across Australia".
The birds nesting season runs between August and December and they will often return to the same tree, and even the same branch, year after year to nest and raise their young. This is a likely reason why there have been more reports of sightings recently, Dooley said.
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