As I go through the data of the 2017 and 2019 bird of the year polls, I bizarrely see no sighting of the Australian pelican among the top 10.
So it is my melancholy duty to inform you that the those polls must therefore be fraudulent.
What other explanation is there?! Surely Guardian Australia readers – those intelligent and cultured souls – would not overlook such a majestic creature?
I’m not sure why I have such an affinity for this giant bird of the water.
Yes, I grew up on the Murray river and so the pelican has captivated me since a young age, and sightings of them bring memories of my childhood on the river flooding back – their grace and bearing doubled with a hook on their beak that scared a young Greg from getting too close.
Perhaps Keats put it best when he wrote of the pelican as a “light-winged Dryad of the trees, in some melodious plot, of beechen green, and shadows numberless, singest of summer in full-throated ease.”
Now sure the purists will say that the pelican is not light winged, nor lives in the trees, and that it doesn’t even sing let alone with full-throated ease.
The pedantic few of you will argue that Keats was actually writing about a nightingale, but I say pfft. The pelican is the true bird of literature and Keats would have agreed with me had he but lived long enough to read the novel or watch the (1976) film version of Storm Boy.
The death of Mr Percival scars me to this day. And that for no other reason should be why the pelican gets your vote.
Sure, I could reel off some facts that I have in no way just copied and pasted from Wikipedia that inform you that its “elaborate nests have also been observed on top of Muehlenbeckia florulenta bushes.[9]”
But instead let’s have a look at the votes.
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Eight birds have made the top 10 in both polls.
The magpie won the first year narrowly.
Last week I was swooped by one while riding. I threw it some bread to let it know I was one of the good people. And then it swooped me again the next day.
So I say hurrah for it falling to fourth in 2019.
In 2017, the bin chicken ibis had a Taylor Swift for the Hottest 100 vibe about it that took it all the way to second place. The cool kids voted for it then but it dropped it to 10th in 2019 and instead got on board the black-throated finch that became a qasi-vote against the Adani mine.
Thus the bird that came 51st in 2017 won in a landslide in 2019, garnering more than a third of all the votes allocated to the top 10.
Now I’m not saying I would build a coalmine near a pelican’s nest if that is what it takes to win. But I’m also not not saying it.
Three other birds were in the top five in both polls and alas look likely to replicate that performance.
The laughing kookaburra always has fans – personally I’d prefer a lightly guffawing kookaburra. But that’s just me.
Then there’s the tawny frogmouth, which upon investigation doesn’t look very tawny at all – more “silver-grey”.
You may even vote for the superb fairywren. If you feel the need to attach yourself to something that brags like Donald Trump about how “superb” it is, go for it.
I won’t judge you.
But come on. Even hip TikTok youngster Matilda Boseley is on board TeamPelican.
OK, don’t vote because of how gorgeous it glides along inches above the water before coming to rest, or because it has the largest bill in the avian world. Let me persuade you with data:
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Stats don’t lie. Being part of TeamPelican will bring you joy and lifelong happiness. Vote early and often.
Greg Jericho writes on economics for Guardian Australia
