Like Mr Bean performing open-heart surgery, I made some mistakes.
It was innocuous enough – a social media post to promote work our researchers were doing to learn more about the white ibis.
“Bin chickens, dump ducks, tip turkeys,” the post started off. “Whatever you want to call the white ibis, our researchers are on a mission to learn more about how these birds breed, feed and move around urban areas.”
The response was swift and fierce – a lot of people did not like ibises being called “bin chickens”.
Given the ubiquity of the term, it never crossed my mind to not use it.
But as people in the comments pointed out – these once proud animals deserve so much more than their funny but derogatory label. These native birds have not only survived human destruction of their natural habitat, they have adapted and thrived.
In return, we have taken an animal that was once revered as the god of science by ancient Egyptians – and with typical laconic Queensland humour – rebadged them as “bin chickens.”
How the mighty have fallen…onto steaming piles of our own garbage.
We must right the wrong!
The people of Facebook had spoken – the white ibis had suffered enough. It was time for this avian underdog to reclaim the respect it deserved, which is not an easy task for an animal best known for foraging through our waste.
But a few of us were up for the challenge, brainstorming a new nickname that would hopefully win over the public through humour and irreverence:
New name options
✨ The Survival Swan ✨
Proud, graceful and tough as hell – the name shared very few attributes with the actual white ibis. But it was ironic – we hoped that would be enough.
It wasn’t – not to win over our preeminent ibis expert Dr Dominique Potvin, anyway. She laughed when we pitched the name to her – but she wasn't on board, explaining a bit of background about one of Australia’s most recognisable birds.
“Pre-colonisation, these were a boom-and-bust species,” Dr Potvin said, incorrectly believing that a room of crayon-wielding marketing people would know what that meant.
“During rainy seasons, they would breed in the native marshland and riverine systems. But during dry seasons, they wouldn’t breed, which always kept populations under control.
“They only started moving towards the coastal areas when waterways started getting diverted from river systems to sustain agriculture.”
Despite now being a common sight in many urban areas, very little is known about the white ibis – because very little research has been done on them.
What we do know, however, is their expansion regime appears to be taking them further south. While they’re established in cities such as Brisbane and Sydney, Dr Potvin said they’re starting to be seen in larger numbers as far south as Melbourne, where they’re possibly developing a taste for good coffee and fluffy croissants.
“Because they’ve got lots of food all year around now, they don’t need to rely on rain to produce more of their food source so there is a constant investment in their reproduction,” Dr Potvin says.
“In one recent study we found that if an ibis’s nest is destroyed they don’t actually move on – they end up just reproducing more because they think the end could be near so they pump out three or four babies as a species-survival mechanism.”
Dr Potvin’s citizen-science study, which has been underway since 2022, has seen more than 150 birds from the Moreton Bay region tagged and tracked with individual numbers and names so that people can find unique ibises – such as “Porter” or “Sorell” – through the Big City Birds app, allowing citizen scientists to build connection with the animals and offer more information about what they’re up to.
On top of this, Dr Potvin’s team has equipped 26 ibis with solar backpacks to see what the birds are doing. What they’ve found is the white ibis tend to move around quite a bit, relocating from places such as Caboolture to thousands of kilometres north in Townsville.
There’s no discernible pattern or reasons for random members of a flock to relocate to a new city – that humans understand, anyway – except perhaps for some of the same reasons people do: new opportunities or a change of scenery.
Whatever your views on the white ibis, they are resilient creatures – there’s no denying that.
So with this in mind, we developed a second, more accurate potential name for this furlong creature:
Option two
✨ Furiosa Phoenix ✨
A Mad Max-inspired moniker about an ancient bird that has survived against all odds despite its natural environment getting turned into an apocalyptic hellscape. Sadly, a more accurate reflection of the actual ibis.
While lacking much of the irony attached to Survival Swan, Dr Potvin was more open to this idea.
But a name only works if there’s social agreement on it, which is why we want to hear your opinion – what nickname do you think the white ibis should be given?
Vote for what you believe in
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