There aren’t that many birds that can kill you. I mean, there’s chicken of course; if you should so much as glance at a raw chicken leg, you’ll die turning yourself inside out with campylobacter or salmonella. But living birds, not so much. The screech owl could scare you to death, perhaps, and certainly a magpie defending its nest can hurt you. But in general, our feathered friends are not very well-equipped to tangle with humans.
Meet the cassowary — "the most dangerous bird in the world". As tall as a person, with knife-like claws, and the capacity to run as fast as a car, a cassowary can, in fact, kill people. If you ever doubted that birds are descendants of dinosaurs, the cassowary would convince you.
Like the birds (though unlike cassowaries), we flew. Dunedin to Auckland to Melbourne, overnight at the tiny-roomed, featureless airport hotel, then on to Cairns. And back via Christchurch. Rising at 2:30 am is never my forte, the various queues meant we missed one flight, and baggage took forever to arrive. The best thing was how easy and pleasant customs and immigration are in Christchurch compared to everywhere else. My mother told me if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all, so that’s all I’m saying about the air travel.
Cairns is a terrific seaside city with a charming esplanade. We often strolled along the waterfront, stopping for an ice cream or a coffee, taking a moment to watch the children paddling in the pool, and of course, looking at birds. The adjacent mudflats are covered with waders, herons, egrets, pelicans; there’s even a special bird-watching alcove where you can chat with your fellow binocular-wearers. There are parrots in the trees, and if you look up into the light fixtures, you can see five or six cute little woodswallows cuddling together.
Of course, you can’t actually go into the sea here — if the sharks and crocodiles don’t eat you, the box jellies will sting you to insanity — hence the pool.
At the southern end of the Esplanade is the marina, where we and a few thousand other people caught a boat out to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). There are all kinds of boats heading in all different directions all day long — we ended up choosing Ocean Freedom because it was small, comparatively inexpensive, and offered breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, and all the gear at two snorkel destinations. That’s how us Kiwis like our ocean — uncrowded, affordable, fully-catered.
Of course, there are sharks. And sea-snakes. And sometimes, on the rare catastrophic occasion, the boats leave without you. And did I mention the sunburn? But we put on sunscreen and kept an eye out, careful not to die before seeing a cassowary.
Back in Cairns, we found several very nice restaurants, and we particularly enjoyed a Balinese one called Bayleaf. I have never before seen "sate buaya" on a menu — crocodile satay, 6 pieces for $16.95, gluten free.
Don’t feel bad, nobody else has heard of Julatten either — population less than 2000, located in the Atherton Tablelands, about three and a-half hours from Cairns. It’s the kind of drive where you think you should have brought more food and water. How ironic if we went to see cassowaries and instead we starved to death!
We like to stay at birdwatcher-friendly eco-lodges when we can, though I for one wouldn’t mind some tea with actual caffeine sometimes. Kingfisher Park Birdwatchers Lodge in Julatten was nestled in the woods and came with a warm welcome — also brushturkeys, megapodes, frogmouths, kingfishers, doves, honeyeaters and even a sunbird. We had a grand time walking the grounds and saw about 25 species. They offer a night nature walk, and that was great too — we saw owls and even a bandicoot!
The plan for bustard viewing was to find remote little farming roads and drive slowly along, looking for a head sticking up out of the grass. It wasn’t long before I found one! Filled with triumph, I pointed it out to His Lordship. But alas, it was only an emu! This enormous bird walked right in front of the car and posed just outside my window for a photo in front of a field of cotton. No cause for alarm — it’s only the eighth-most dangerous bird in the world.
In a place called Cape Tribulation, we found Floravilla: "Supernatural Biodynamic Organic Ice Cream Made Here". His Lordship’s third most favourite thing (after birds and wine) is ice cream.
After a day birdwatching along the road, we eventually crossed the Daintree River on the Daintree Ferry and found ourselves at the Daintree Deep Forest Lodge, north of Diwan. It was late afternoon. We had only arrived a few minutes ago, but we went out to look at the garden, filled with flowers and fruits even though it was midwinter. We came round a hedge and found ourselves two metres away from a large male cassowary, stuffing its face with plump, purple plums.
This is the third-tallest, second-heaviest, and most dangerous of all living birds. They stand up to 2m tall, but the one we saw was more like 1.5m (about my height). His mostly black feathers were in vivid contrast to his red and blue neck. He was crowned with a dramatic head piece, called a casque. I looked down at the bulky three-toed feet with long sharp claws and shivered.
I imagine I would feel the same if I came upon a Triceratops — terrified and wanting to run, but also keen to get closer to see it properly, and maybe get a photo.
Male cassowaries do almost all the caregiving. They do the egg-sitting, and protect the chicks for up to nine months — the one we saw was probably about to depart into adulthood, making room for the next clutch. The males take the young ones around their large (up to 2.8ha) territories, showing them good fruits and little animals to eat. They swallow everything whole, and are important distributors of seeds through their large piles of poop.
In northern Australia, the southern cassowary population has been in decline. While we could blame vehicles, wild boars, and dogs, all of those things have had little apparent effect on the healthy and growing cassowary population in similar New Guinea. In Australia, it’s the loss of much of their deep forest habitat, knocked down both by people and cyclones, that mostly threatens these huge magnificent birds.
Within the next two days, we saw eight. Three young ones, soon after having left their father’s protection, roamed a local park, right next to and even under the boardwalk. Two on the side of the road, and then another one.
Much later I discovered that cassowaries may be the first bird ever to have been domesticated by humans. In Papua New Guinea, some tribes raised cassowary chicks as "semi-tame" poultry, thousands of years before chickens became the deadliest bird. Of the 200-plus recorded attacks by cassowaries, only two have killed people. In contrast, poultry-related food poisoning by campylobacter and salmonella kills about 600 people in the USA every year (5 in Australia, none in NZ).
But back to the birds ... we visited mangrove boardwalks, botanic gardens, wetlands, and a beach. I vividly recall a public toilet shaded by gnarled bush, decorated with spiders bigger than my hand. I don’t know if they are harmful but they certainly look like they could eat a small person.
Before we left we visited Cattana Wetlands back in Cairns, with a nice lake where we saw ducks and jacana. A long green snake wriggled along next to the pathway and I took a video while His Lordship made the noises that Kiwis make when faced with lethal reptiles.
In a week in tropical northern Queensland we saw 132 species of birds. And I can’t tell you how many times people apologised for how cold it was (20°C was the minimum) and how few birds there were (birds were absolutely everywhere). We saw a good proportion of the about 850 species known in Australia despite it being winter. Nevertheless, a trip during the actual birdwatching season could be called for — if we dare.
Despite facing death by drowning, sunburn, shark attack, spider bite, crocodile satay, snake bite, cassowary, and airport coffee, we made it home to be greeted by a heavy frost, watery sunshine, and a tui singing in our garden. Back safe home.
