Australian bustard

Description

The Australian bustard is the only species of the genus Ardeotis found in Australia, a genus otherwise occurring in Africa, India and the Australasian region. It resembles an American turkey in form and behaviour. The crown and nape are black, the long neck is pale grey at the front, and the wings and upper body are brown. A black band of feathers separates the white abdomen from the light grey neck.

The wing coverts show black and white patterning visible at rest or in flight. The iris is white, and the beak ranges from whitish to brown. The legs are long and yellow to cream coloured. Males reach up to 1.2 m in height with a 2.3 m wingspan and average 6.3 kg, though weights range from 4.3 to 12.76 kg.

Females are smaller at 80 cm tall, with a 1.8 m wingspan and average body mass of 3.2 kg, ranging from 2.4 to 6.35 kg. The largest male recorded weighed 14.5 kg, a specimen from Victoria. Despite being the largest extant flying land bird in Australia, it is the smallest species in the genus Ardeotis.

Behaviour

The Australian bustard is mostly terrestrial and usually seen walking slowly alone or in pairs. When disturbed, it often adopts a cryptic pose with neck erect and bill pointed skywards, then may stalk away or run, taking flight only as a last resort. Flight is achieved with heavy wing beats, yet the bird has strength and stamina for long-distance travel. Roosting occurs at high points on open plains or in trees where available.

During the breeding season, males perform a conspicuous display: they expand a neck sac, display longer feathers as a swaying skirt, hold the head upward, point wings toward the ground, arch the tail over the back, and stride about while emitting deep roaring noises transliterated as "who-o-o-o". Territorial disputes between males involve this display and call, but direct physical conflict is rare; one incident of combat at about 25 metres height was recorded in Arnhemland.

No nest is constructed. The clutch is usually one egg, sometimes two, laid on unadorned ground near a small shrub. The egg shell is marked with olive-brown blotching and streaks over most of the surface, with a lighter olive-brown or olive-green background. Incubation is by the female. Chicks leave the site soon after hatching and rely on mottled downy plumage for camouflage.

Distribution and habitat

The Australian bustard is found across much of Australia, with occasional sightings in southern Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. Its presence in the southeast has shrunk, and it has vanished from some areas where it once lived. Studies using satellite tracking and tagging show that birds in wetter regions tend to stay put, while those in drier areas roam more widely. The species can become locally common after land clearing or when grasshoppers swarm.

The strongest attachment to a single area occurs in high-rainfall parts of northern and northwestern Australia. It prefers open grasslands, spinifex plains, and low shrublands, sometimes with scattered trees. After a fire, it moves into thicker vegetation, and it also uses human-made clearings like golf courses and farms. In Southwest Australia, it historically lived on the dunes and flats of the Swan Coastal Plain south to Busselton and inland into the Wheatbelt.

It stayed away from forests and dense cover. Local accounts blame over-hunting and land clearing, not foxes, for its disappearance from that region.

Cultural references

Aboriginal people in Central Australia commonly refer to the Australian bustard as the bush turkey and consider it an important food source, still hunted and eaten today despite its protected status. The white feathers are used for ceremonial purposes. There are important Dreaming stories associated with the bird, and some desert artists paint bush turkey Dreaming, indicating they have been given stories of its origins in the Dreamtime and are entitled to tell and paint about it.

Hunting was noted as difficult due to the bird's elusive habits, but colonists found greater success from horseback and later from motor vehicles. Legislation introduced during the later nineteenth century included closed seasons and eventually a prohibition on shooting, with Aboriginal peoples exempted. The species' value in controlling grasshopper outbreaks was promoted to discourage hunting, yet illegal hunting continued into the twentieth century.

John Gould described the flesh as delicate and well-flavoured. Bustard Bay on Queensland's Discovery Coast was named by Lt. James Cook after his party shot and killed a bustard there, declaring it the best bird they had eaten since leaving England. Bustard Head, at the northern end of the bay, is the site of the first lighthouse erected in Queensland. Barossa Valley winery Turkey Flat takes its name from the Australian bustard, and its logo features the bird as drawn by artist Rod Schubert.

Did You Know?

• The species was first described by John Edward Gray in 1829 as Otis australis, but the type specimen is now lost after being sold to a private buyer.
• John Gould provided a description in 1841, naming the bird Otis australasianus using a skin from Western Australia; that specimen is held at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
• The Australian bustard is not listed as threatened on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.