The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think

by Jennifer Ackerman

The new-world toad was introduced to Australia in 1935 and spread quickly from Cape York Peninsula to Sydney and west beyond Darwin, bringing death to predators unfamiliar with its venom. Over just a few decades, pied butcherbirds, along with a few other clever species—Torresian crows, black kites, pied currawongs, white ibises—discovered the trick of avoiding the toad’s poisonous parts, the glands on the back of its head and the skin itself. Otherwise the toad is well worth eating. Their technique: flipping over the toad and eating from the belly side inward. Ibises consume only the toad’s legs. Black kites eat only the tongue.