Incredible discovery centimetres from train tracks leaves Aussie stunned

A wildlife documentarian shared his surprise at finding a nesting native bird had laid its eggs merely 30 centimetres from a "regularly used railway" — saying he "can't decide" whether it's "one of the worst spots ever or one of the best".

Queenslander Wil Kemp found a bush-stone curlew and it's nest near a set of train tracks in Cairns earlier this week. Speaking to Yahoo News Australia, Kemp said because "trains never swerve", coupled with the fact that predators don't inhabit the area, he thought the eggs are actually in a pretty safe spot.

Kemp said the peculiar find highlights the fact that "we can live with wildlife to the best of our ability", all we need to do "is slightly tweak our behaviour".

"We just need to change our attitudes a little bit," he told Yahoo News. "In this particular instance, it wasn't much. We just had to locate where the nest was, we put the witches out there, and we'll just keep an eye on them now."

Humans should work with nature, not against it

The Cairns man said wildlife is often "portrayed as a nuisance" when animals "decide to present themselves" in situations like this "and all too often they are caught, removed, relocated or even sometimes, euthanised".

He said people are normally all too quick to call their local council when they think nature is in our way.

"When an animal presents itself in our lives, like those curlews, a lot of us, unfortunately, just don't have any tolerance for that, and we just want them gone," he said. But actually, sometimes with a slight tweak to our way of thinking, we can coexist in harmony, Kemp argued.

"There's no wild pigs, there's no dingoes, and no pythons or goannas or anything like that," he said. "Its probably a fantastic place to lay eggs, when you think about it."

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Expert's advice on bush-stone curlews

ANU's Shoshana Rapley, who is doing her PhD on bush-stone curlews, said the birds are not yet endangered in Queensland like they are in NSW and Victoria — which is exactly why we should work to keep it that way.

"Keeping common species common is one of the best and most cost-effective ways to prevent extinctions," she told Yahoo News Australia.

"Larger, more diverse and complex populations are more resilient and less likely to be wiped out by catastrophic events such as fires. Furthermore, abundance and diversity of wildlife provides ecosystem services — bush stone-curlews predate species that occur in plague numbers such as mice."

Rapley urged people to learn more about native birds, highlighting that wildlife carers are being "inundated with curlew chicks" that should have been left in their natural habitat.

"People with good intentions are taking healthy chicks out of home territory because they assume them to be unwell as their natural response to danger is to lie very still," she said.

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