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‘Fart bird’ debate purely hot air

July 17, 2021 Don Knowler

Trying to identify the song of the only native thrush found in Tasmania, I received a shock when I discovered the ABC had dubbed the species the “fart bird”.
I took a double take: was I really reading this about the Bassian thrush? But there it was, not so much in black and white, in audio on ABC Radio Melbourne’s Afternoons with Jacinta Parsons.
Jacinta was in conversation with BirdLife Australia’s Sean Dooley who was detailing ongoing research into how the Bassian thrush of Tasmania’s wet forests hunts its prey in the damp leaf litter.
Dooley’s rather polite reference to thrush flatulence was immediately translated into “fart” for Jacinta’s audience.
According to Dooley, a researcher had observed a thrush squat over leaf litter, and apparently expel wind. It was speculated that the rush of warm air, or gases released from the bird’s warm body, encouraged ground-dwelling worms and grubs to come to the surface where they provided an easy meal.
Dooley, however, raised scepticism about the behaviour which was first seen among birds resident in South Australia and later noted by a Tasmanian observer. The bird is found across south-east Australia but is generally associated with this side of the Bass Strait.
My interest in the Bassian thrush had stemmed earlier in the day from an email I had received from a friend in my native Britain, asking me to identify a bird he had heard in woods near his Devon home.
Listening to his mobile phone recording, I put the mystery bird in the thrush family and, by coincidence, a little later in the day I heard an unfamiliar song in the Waterworks Reserve. It sounded like a thrush but not the most vociferous member of the family, the introduced blackbird. It was here that I stumbled on the ABC “fart bird” reference while searching for a recording of a singing Bassian thrush.
I was pleased to have discovered the Waterworks thrush because in recent years the species has become less common in the reserve, confirming a suspicion that in bushland adjoining suburbia it is being replaced by the more aggressive blackbird.
The Bassian thrush is hard to find at the best of times, being extremely secretive, hiding on the forest floor. For this it is ideally camouflaged, its overall warm-brown plumage overlaid by a scalloped pattern of darker feathers.
The beautiful song, though, betrays the thrush’s presence. Although it does not have the resonance and complexity of the blackbird song – which I always describe as sounding like a human singing – the Bassian thrush has a sweet melody of just a few notes, which are repeated.
As for the other tidbit of thrush information, I have my doubts about the flatulence theory. As I’ve not observed it myself, I can only speculate the “fart bird debate” it is purely hot air.

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