Hi all,
Am on holiday over from New Zealand, and today took a ticky-tour up Mount Barker summit near Adelaide. There were Yellow-Faced Honeyeater, Superb Fairywren, Eastern Spinebill and, surprisingly, a Chukar. I presume this bird was realeased recently, as there are no ebird records of it, and it was fairly tame for a partridge. It was definately a Chukar, we have them on the other side of the ditch and I know how to tell them from Red-Legged Partridge. I have heard of them being realeased in New South Wales, but not here. Was wondering if this is uncommon, or anyone else knew anything about the bird?
Michael
I live about 18 km from Mt Barker & have visited the summit a few times. But I've never seen a Chukar before - there or anywhere else. Michael, if you haven't already you might want to report this to Mt Barker Council's environment officer. He/she will probably not give it a priority for action but at least there'll be a little more environmental pressure on Council to be responsible.
I'm aware of people who do all sorts of environmentally irresponsible things like releasing introduced birds into the wild so what you've seen doesn't surprise me. Of course, this bird might be an escapee which begs another question: Why do people keep exotic birds in cages when there's always a chance of them escaping into the wild & adding to the already overwhelming number of ferals in Australia?
In New Zealand our wildlife has been ruined by introduced birds, and farmers still throw stuff out like there's no tomorrow. Consider yourself lucky!
some people keep them as table birds; they are popular hunting fodder overseas. others keep them as an ornamental aviary/farm subject.
i think some wild breeding has been periodically reported from nsw and tas.
apparently they have been 'successfully' introduced as a game bird in new zealand also and are something of a minor tourist attraction for hunters, though the population is declining (might be some correlation there), however this has the effect of more being deliberately released to compensate for losses!