How pandemic proved the ‘bin chicken’ doesn’t need humans for a feed

“When you see them going through bins and things, what they’re actually doing is getting a little snack. But it’s not their main source of food.”

Lockdowns across Australia in 2020 reduced human movement in many areas to levels not seen for hundreds of years.

Professor Jones said while the assumption might have been that species such as the ibis would struggle without humans around, the opposite was true.

“It’s not just ibis, but also a range of animals which we thought were dependent on human development but are really just working around it,” he said.

“There are benefits to living in the city [for animals]; there are often less predators, there are more places to nest, and all these different types of birds are taking advantage of those things.”

“We now know that the food available from human sources is a really minor part of the equation.”

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Several thousand ibises call the greater Brisbane area home, although the number fluctuates with the seasons and with the local resources available.

Professor Jones said ibises were extremely adaptable, and that was the reason they did so well in urban areas.

“One of the big revelations we’ve had over the last few years is discovering just how sophisticated they are, they’re treating cities as yet another habitat alongside things like forests and wetlands,” he said.

“If you’re going to survive in an unpredictable place like Australia, that’s one of the key things you have to be able to do, is say things aren’t going great here, let’s up stumps and go somewhere better.”

The ibis has previously proven its adaptability and resilience – a few years ago Brisbane City Council tried to reduce the number of ibises in public areas by playing bird noises it thought would annoy the birds.

Instead, the ibises appeared to be unperturbed by the measure, while council received several complaints about the speaker noises from local businesses.

Professor Jones warns that not all species are as adaptable as the humble bin chicken.

“There are a lot of species which have been pushed out by human expansion, we’re only talking about a handful of species that can cope, most of them can’t,” he said.

“So we can’t just say some animals are doing well and so there’s no issues, we have totally simplified the surrounding ecology of cities, there’s much less than there should be.”