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Casuarius casuarius
A large flightless bird (ratites) of Australia, other cassowary species are found in New Guinea. There is sexual dimorphism, where the female is significantly larger than the male. The male raises the chicks rather than the female. This species is on the ICUN red list.
Tropical rainforest with lots of fruiting trees. Diet is fruit. It is the main disperser of seeds throughout the Australian rainforests such as the Daintree.
6 Comments
I didn't think of that. I will in the future :). And that's quite alright. I enjoyed telling the story haha.
Thanks for adding that information! If you could add details like this to the notes in your spottings in future, they become all the more interesting. Thanks again. :)
@Neil - I know. We normally ate outside, but had to wait till he had left. Certainly didn't want to startle him. You don't want to get on the wrong side of a Cassowary!
Great story and photos. When 'they' feel threatened, they can be very dangerous animals - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew...
The house we were staying at was bordered by rainforest to the back, and beach to the front. We came back from work one day, when one of the people I was living with happened to look out when she was heading to the bathroom. Lo and behold there was this Cassowary inspecting his reflection. He hung around for about ten minutes. It really was an unusual situation, and we were really lucky.
Welcome to Project Noah! This is certainly an unusual spotting; can you tell us something about how the bird happened to be looking inside the house? The largest birds that look in my windows are woodpeckers!