THE SECRET WORLD OF EDINBURGH GARDENS

Words by Charlie Gill

Illustrations by Marnie Florence

This feature was originally published in The Rotunda's December 2024 edition. The pdf is accessible via our home page.

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On January 1st this year, two teenagers cycled out of Fitzroy to ride around Australia, aiming to raise $100,000 to build a school in Timor Leste and spot 700 native bird species. In November, they rode back into the inner-city, where friends, family and fans were waiting. It was then that Cezary Carmicheal and Leo Norman heard the squawks ring out with new meaning: they were home.

“The closer and closer we got to Fitzroy, the more familiar and nostalgic the bird life became,” Cezary told The Rotunda.

Edinburgh Gardens is far from a birdwatching hotspot, lacking the density of native fauna that attracts a great number of species. But as famous birdwatcher Sean Dooley puts it, “birds have wings and can turn up anywhere.” In consultation with Sean, Cezary, Leo, and two thirteen-year old local birdwatchers named Gus and Toby, The Rotunda has assembled a guide to Edinburgh Gardens’ avian life: a secret world hiding in plain sight.

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Yellow-tailed black cockatoo

Zanda funerea

Given their brown-black plumage, mournful call and languid wing flap, these birds were once known as funereal cockatoos, and are seen as harbingers of rain in many Aboriginal cultures. Sean, author of The Big Twitch and National Public Affairs Manager for Birdlife Australia, says their numbers are dropping: “They're being displaced because of bushfires and native forest logging, and have to look further afield for food.” They love pine trees, which Edinburgh Gardens lacks, but also feast on seeds from others. That must be how Cezary spotted a flock of around thirty five near the skatepark in 2022, presumably finding kindred spirits in the darkly clad skaters hurtling through the bowl.

“They’re such a graceful, large bird,” says Cezary. “To see them there was a pretty fantastic experience.”

Rainbow lorikeet

Trichoglossus moluccanus

Rainbow lorikeets surely see themselves as the maverick protagonists of the bird world. With their iconic plumage, deafening squawk and winner’s mindset, they often out-compete the heinous common mynas for nesting spots. Egotistically, they’re attracted to the elm trees on the far side of Alfred Crescent with red and green foliage like their own feathers. You’ll also spot them soaring from the gums on the dog-field and screeching in the oaks near the Rotunda.

“I think a lot of people in Melbourne take rainbow lorikeets for granted,” says Cezary. “They’re one of the most colourful and bright birds, but they lose the allure when you see them every day.

Tawny frogmouth

Podargus strigoides

These gremlins of the night are as cute as they are sly. Perching low on trees during the day, tawny frogmouths blend into the silvery-grey background and contort their bodies to look like broken branches; in Edinburgh Gardens, though, these masters of disguise seem more like apprentices. Three years ago, passers-by spotted a sphere of fluff balancing atop a log to the north of Alfred Crescent oval: a stranded baby that’d fallen off a nearby tree from which its parents watched on anxiously. A crowd gathered before an expert arrived to return it to its nest. Toby, in year seven, says his favourite bird in the park is the grey butcherbird in the trees next to the tennis court, but he always keeps a look-out for tawny frogmouths. They've recently been spotted near the Brunswick Street Oval grandstand.

Australian magpie

Gymnorhina tibicen

Magpies are polymaths, famous for their melodic birdsong and talent for mimicry, and their good name is being debased by Collingwood fans. Both, however, share a natural instinct for combat and penchant for theft. (In truth, scientists have found magpies aren’t actually that attracted to shiny things.) This year they're angry, with one woman telling The Rotunda her Border Collie is being relentlessly swooped in Edinburgh Gardens.

“Yesterday there was a guard maggie who swooped my dog just to let him know what the situation was straight off!” Here, it’s easier to spot magpie-larks: smaller, with a white dash atop their eye. There’s a nest sitting in a branch of a gum tree on the dog-field.

Grey fantail

Rhipidura albiscap

“Edinburgh Gardens doesn’t attract smaller birds and diverse species because there’s not a lot of native habitat,” explains Gus, who typically goes elsewhere to birdwatch. With that in mind, it was a happy accident that a grey fantail did visit us this year. They’re captivating birds who flit through the air like acrobats as they catch insects, and their tail fans out like a pretty shell.

Common myna

Acridotheres tristis

Your least favourite bird’s least favourite bird. Introduced to Australia to eliminate insect pests, common mynas soon started damaging crops themselves. Now, they’re the streetsmart bullies of the bird world that everyone hates. Often found scheming in groups on Brunswick Street Oval, these brown-winged villains routinely throw native species like the red-rumped parrot out of their homes.

“They nest in the same tree hollows, so they can turf parrots out violently and kill the chicks,” says Sean.

Common mynas are often confused with the native noisy minor, but if you get close enough to spot the yellow mark cradling their eye, just know you’re looking at pure evil.

Red rumped parrot

Psephotus haematonotus

Coloured in a blend of sandy beach yellow, island mangrove green, lagoon blue and sunset red, these parrots are little tropical paradises flitting about Edinburgh Gardens. The females are coloured a more sober grey-green—you get the sense they handle the finances in the relationship—and these pairs are together for life. But it can be hard building a home in a dangerous neighbourhood: the tree hollows they nest in are pursued ruthlessly by common mynas.

"I love how they blend in with the grass while feeding, then display their colours when they fly," says Toby, who's been birdwatching with his older brother since age eight.

You can see them gathered in cute little groups feeding on the Brunswick Street Oval grass or perched on the fence rail. Most often, you’ll see them fluttering around the elm tree they love on the north-western hill next to the Bowls Club. "I’ve seen some juveniles around lately,” says Gus, suggesting they could certainly be breeding there, or at least nearby.

This is exactly the area designated to be obliterated come the construction of the new sports pavilion, raising concerns they'll have to leave Edinburgh Gardens for good. They’re the most interestine native bird we’ve got here. Could they find a new home?

“Nest hollows are prime real estate in the city for rainbow lorikeets, starlings, common mynas, and possums,” says Sean. “It'd be a pity if those nest hollows were lost, if the redrumped parrots were breeding in them.”

So if you’re losing perspective during a busy day, find some peace in someone else’s, and stop by the grassland next to the bowl’s club to watch these pretty parrots enjoy the simple rhythms of their lovely lives—which might be about to get a lot more complicated.

Australian hobby

Falco longipennis

It’s a phrase that typically refers to things like bingedrinking and pokies addiction, but other forms of Australian Hobbies are just as dangerous. Often called the ‘little falcon’, these birds can reach speeds of up to 100 kilometres per hour as they swoop through the air— but they aren’t compensating for anything (just check the second half of their official scientific name). Their high-speed chases are in pursuit of prey, caught and eaten mid-flight. With brown-black plumage and dark eyeshadow, Australian Hobbies are the masked vigilantes of the bird world, doling out rough justice to invasive species like starlings.

Sean, who used to live in North Fitzroy, spotted one flying overhead in Edinburgh Gardens. “They’re the smaller, more compact version of a peregrine falcon,” he says. The peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on the planet.

Swift parrot

Lathamus discolor

Admittedly, the swift parrot, named Bird of Year in 2023, has probably never shown up in Edinburgh Gardens and probably never will. Conversationists are trying to halt the extinction of these bright-green parrots, slowly dying out due to native forest logging in Tasmania, where they breed. But given there could be as few as 300 left, we felt obligated to mention one turned up close by, in a setting as fitting as it is tragic: the Melbourne General Cemetery next to Princes Park.

Red wattlebird

Anthochaera carunculata

Red wattlebirds are the second largest honey-eater in Australia. They’re territorial and cantankerous, with large red wattles hanging by their necks like the oversized earrings worn by your scariest aunty at Christmas. They’re tough cookies, and the kind of native species that can make a living in a woodland like Edinburgh Gardens. “Red wattlebirds don't need as many native flowering trees as most of the other honey-eaters, because they will eat lots of insects,” says Sean.

Powerful owl

Ninox strenua

For the the possum kingdom within Edinburgh Gardens, this terrifying species is the Bird That Must Not Be Named: don’t even think about it, because if a powerful owl ever rides a zephyr down to one of Edinburgh Garden’s oak trees, you’re pretty much dead already. With super-sharp talons and terrifying faces, they’re Australia’s most fearsome nocturnal bird—and the largest. Sean describes them as “two feet tall, big solid units of possum-crunching power”. Two feet!

Carlton Gardens had one earlier this year, and Sean says they’re every chance to show up in Edinburgh Gardens, too: “With so many possums, there's a good food supply. You often get young individual birds trying to find territory. To see them in the middle of Melbourne is an amazing thing.”

So don’t be surprised if possum families show up on your doorstep asking if you’ve got any spare rooms, and yes the pantry would do just fine. They can sense an omen drifting in the wind.

Common brushtail possum

Trichosurus vulpecula

Maybe they’ve featured a bit too heavily for an article about birds, but if you were leading a safari through Edinburgh Gardens, possums are just about the only non-avian wildlife you could point to. And while they might be nuisances constantly in pursuit of food, you can’t help but laugh as their bungled heist attempts play out in roof gutters, scrambling back to safety once they smell your dog. We should have some love in our hearts for possums—not out of sympathy for their constant owl-induced terror, but because they’re just like us: curled up in cubbies, wary of danger and very much partial to a block of Cadbury Fruit & Nut chocolate.

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Cezary and Leo have settled back in Melbourne after their incredible adventure. It gave them a new appreciation for place: the way the magic of the landscape seeps into your soul. According to Cezary, birds are essential to that.

“They’re a reflection of the place you're in, whether that's pristine habitat or inner-city Melbourne. They’re like stories, in the sense they’re a representation of our connection to that place.”

Birds are everything: sweethearts and rockstars, shapeshifters and stormriders, little fairies disappearing in the dusk sunlight and nightmares prowling through the evening air. They’re nature’s greatest musicians, and sure, maybe this park's bush symphony isn’t as dynamic as elsewhere. But it still might be worth listening to. Toby puts it best:

"Edinburgh Gardens is not the best place to birdwatch in this area. But the morning bird song in the gardens is still always able to make me happy."