Meet the bird that’s driving Sydneysiders insane. What did it do wrong?

One of Australia’s native birds is on the move – but it’s the type of move that’s not popular with everyone. Can you guess which bird it is, and why some people are maybe a little hesitant in welcoming it to their neighbourhood?

According to The New Daily, the brush turkey is gradually spreading its wings to take up residence in more and more areas of Australia. Once a fixture of the national parks surrounding Sydney, it has now moved into harbourside suburbs – occasionally oven the inner city!

It seems the birds are keen to repopulate the areas they used to inhabit before European settlement.

However, by human standards, they’re not exactly the nicest neighbours. The male brush turkeys will build an enormous mound to attract a potential mate. Passing females will inspect the mound; if they like it, they will dig a hole and lay their egg there. Mating with the male is the price of admission.

The problem is that a lot of scratching and digging and general mess is required to build a mound, which can be up to five metres in diameter and up to two metres high.

Not surprisingly, this makes them unpopular with some garden-proud home owners, who don’t appreciate the sudden appearance of this rather large and unwanted piece of landscape architecture.

However, some of the website’s readers have leapt to the poor brush turkey’s defence.

“We invaded their territory, not the other way around,” wrote one New Daily commenter. “Maybe people should consider making the mound a feature of their garden rather than complain about how it inconveniences them. We want to live near bushland because of its beauty then complain about every little inconvenience”.

Others said the brush turkey mounds were nothing compared to the annoying habits of birds like the Indian myna.

“They gang up on my friendly family of Maggies and drive them away…” another person said. “Now they would be ‘good riddance’ to any Australian neighbourhood”.

But in terms of pure cheekiness, this comment has to be our favourite: “No worse than two sets of rival Queenslanders invading one’s home city (Sydney) for a certain recent sporting event”.

What birds (if any) do you have an issue with? Have you had any brush turkey mounds appear in your garden? Should we just live with them, or should home owners have the right of eviction?