There was a good bird segment on catalyst last night.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/4194557.htm
They said that Aussie songbirds (and parrots) are more agressive and intelligent, noisy and social than songbirds on other continents. The conclusion is that songbirds evolved in Australia first. At the moment I have lots of Currawwongs, magpies, gang gangs, cockatoos and rosellas hanging round my place for the fruit. All those adjectives fit the behaviour of the birds very well.
it was drawing on Tim Low's book - Where Song Began http://timlow.com/books/bird-book
Peter
I thought it was an all right read my only qualm was the seemingly quasi-jingositic espousal of our avifauna being in various ways practically superior to the rest of the world, including incongruous and i thought rather irrelevant remarks such as snippets along the lines of 'native fruit dove has more colours than those found in the rest of the world combined' and 'australia was the first continent with (bird) song and it always had the best song', references to '...ordinary northern hemisphere songbirds' and a constant reiteration of the purported uniqueness of australian birds.
Very interesting thoughts about this book, zosterops. I have it on my bedside table ready for reading.