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Group of pigeons eating food on the ground
Feeding birds usually isn’t viewed as a particularly nefarious activity. However, that is the case when it comes to a man in Australia who has managed to rile up people in a neighborhood oustide of Sydney by throwing seeds all over the place in the dead of night.
I can’t say I would have guessed the act of feeding birds is statistically the second-most popular hobby in the United States, as it apparently trails only gardening when it comes to the most popular leisurely pastimes Americans turn to in their free time.
The story I’ll be discussing momentarily also brought me down a bird-feeding rabbit hole concerning the history of that particular activity, as a canonized Scotsman known as Saint Serf is credited with being the first person in recorded history to go out of his way to provide wild avians with food (specifically the “taming of a wild robin by the act of hand feeding”).
Bird-feeding tends to be a fairly passive and relaxing activity, as most people fill up a feeder with seeds or sit on a park bench in the hopes of attracting some flying friends. However, there is one man in Australia who is seemingly on some sort of mission based on a pattern of behavior that has drawn the ire of locals who’ve taken issue with his methods.
A guy dubbed the “Burwood Birdman” has been causing headaches in a neighborhood in Australia
According to Nine.com, residents of an apartment building in Burwood, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, live in a complex that overlooks a plaza with multiple signs that read “NO BIRD FEEDING.”
However, there is one man who has been ignoring them on a virtually nightly basis for two years, as locals say he arrives in the middle of the night with multiple buckets of birdseed that get strewn on the ground.
He doesn’t stick around for sunrise, but that marks the arrival of hundreds of hungry customers that make a racket that can reach over 100 decibels and produce what a veterinarian who spoke with A Current Affair described as a “poo explosion.”
One man identified only as Louis says he believes the culprit, who has been dubbed the “Burwood Birdman,” is engaging in a “malicious act” while floating some theories about his motivations, saying, “Whether there’s a scorned lover in the building, maybe an ex-girlfriend or someone that’s cheated on him, or, you know, I think someone’s paying him to do it.”
A reporter for the outlet was able to catch the masked offender in the act, but he declined to say a word as she peppered him with questions in an attempt to figure out what’s driving him.
However, the city council did say they are working with the police to crack down on the Burwood Birdman and (hopefully) get to the bottom of the mystery.