To sit, and to be surrounded by Apostlebirds, is to live. You can take your Everest climbs, self actualisation courses and nudey streaks across the MCG on the first morning of the Boxing Day Test and shove them all where no self-respecting bunch of brown feathers would go. For there is no greater life affirming experience than to be surrounded by Apostlebirds.
Yes I am a fan, as are most people – in fact show me someone who isn’t – and I’ll show you someone for whom all the marrow of life has been sucked out leaving nothing but a jaded empty husk in deep need of a heavy dose of ABM (apostlebird magic, for the uninitiated – of which ranks none of you shall be included by the end of this article).
So what are Apostlebirds and why are they so good? I’m glad you asked. Apostlebirds are highly social medium sized brown birds that are relatively common in our area. They are colonial breeders and do everything together – from foraging, to nesting, to feeding and raising the young – to intense gossip sessions as they move around feeding.
If you’ve ever been to a party and you’ve missed out on the most exciting news that all your friends are avidly talking about – that’s what it’s like to watch Apostlebirds in action – except we’re never going to know what the subject of their gossip is. These birds are intensely chatty and social – and as passerines (the most recently evolved bird order) are highly intelligent as well.
They are one of the few birds in Australia to build a mud cup nest – and are entirely endemic to Australia. They are found throughout the drier woodland areas of the eastern interior – and the northern savanah regions of the Northern Territory. They are called Apostlebirds because they are found in groups of around a dozen but it does very from about eight to twenty. Their chatty nature has given them a variety of names including Happy Jack, Happy Family, Squark and the immortal CWA Bird. Personally I think the CWA needs to adopt them as their logo, or at the very least pay them some kind of licensing fee. They are also called Lousy Jack on account of having lice. This is a thoroughly unfounded allegation which I refuse to believe, until substantial evidence is presented to me. As intelligent social birds they allopreen regularly which means they will be readily eating any alleged lice off each other.
However their preference is for seed from the ground and insects which they find in amongst the bark on trees.
To experience Apostlebirds in our local area the best sites are Bullocky Rest at Crows Nest, and the main street of Goombungee – both of which are very reliable sites to see them. If you can’t get to these locations I have a number of videos of them on my youtube channel www.youtube.com/@birdbites.
On the topic of Bird Bites too – I’d just like to thank the over 1000 local followers of the Bird Bites Facebook page – and I apologise for it no longer existing. That was not my preferred outcome, but in his infinite wisdom Mark Zuckerberg decided my facebook account was fake and suspended me. After going some of the way to meet his highly intrusive methods of verifying my identity, I eventually decided enough is enough and pulled the account, and the Bird Bites group has sadly gone down with it. I would certainly recommend Mr Zuckerberg gets a good dose of Apostlebird magic into him as well.
This article first appeared in The Crows Post in April 2026