Hello Birdy

In his first episode, William McInnes scales new heights to meet the most charismatic of the birds, the parrots. With fifty seven species in Australia, there's plenty of colourful characters, from the drunken louts of the Top End to the high class 'yuppies' of Sydney's prime real estate. Some are thriving in the modern world but many are struggling to survive.

In this episode, William goes to ground to meet the big birds - ancient birds that have been around for 65 million years. With useless wings, these birds are not great at flying and mostly scratch out an existence in the grasslands and forests of Australia. William is off to see how they are fairing today.

This time William is warming up his vocal chords and off to meet the songbirds, the most diverse bird group in the world. It's believed they evolved here, in Australia. His journey commences in Queensland's Lamington National Park - a natural concert hall for some of the most beautiful singing birds in the world.

If any bird embodies power, speed and grace, it has to be the raptor, or bird of prey. In this episode, William travels across the continent to meet some of Australia's wild and captive raptors and suss out our special relationship with these magnificent birds that goes back centuries— and see just how useful some of them are to us.

In this episode William travels far and wide to meet the birds we love to hate. The pests. These are species that have taken up city living and with food available around the clock, their populations have exploded. William hopes that by getting to know them, just a little, we might learn to love them.

In this episode, William joins the biggest frequent flyer club in the world, getting hands on with some migratory birds that are marvels of long distance travel. For these creatures there are no borders, no customs and no need for luggage. There are many people studying these birds and William is clocking up the K's as he works alongside them to find out the innovative ways to keep tabs on these winged jet setters.