Finally, Australia Has Embraced the Bin Chicken

Threskiornis molucca, the Australian white ibis. A pest, a scourge, an icon. For years, the humble bin chicken has been Australia's favourite target for scorn and ridicule. Labelled everything from the "smelly canary in our cities," to "bin juice drinking dregs."

That is, until now. With 2017 quickly coming to a close it seems the tide is turning for the ibis.

Between burning through the country's supply of nangs and somehow avoiding dropping off balconies, it seems this year Schoolies are flocking to the Gold Coast's tattoo shops to turn their bodies into permanent shrines to the humble ibis.

Luke Braniff, a tattoo artist at Crossfire Tattoos in Surfers Paradise, told Yahoo7 he estimates he's done about 10 bin chicken tattoos this Schoolies season. Admittedly, many of these were pulled from the shop's lucky dip game called "You Get What You Get." But most Schoolies, it seems, were happy to have scored the ibis.

"I am really satisfied with the ibis tattoos," Schoolie Jarod Christie told Yahoo7. Jarod has two ibis tattoos. "There are much worse things I could have gotten," he said. "They are always a conversation starter."

Meanwhile, as votes flood in for The Guardian's inaugural "Bird of the Year" competition, the ibis has secured a clear lead with some 13 percent of the total at last count. It's closest competition, the magpie, is trailing around 11 percent. Votes close at the end of this week, but it's unlikely the bin chicken's closest competition—the magpie—will be able to overtake.

(Ed's note: VICE Australia is firmly #TeamTawnyFrogmouth).

So why the change? Well, Australia has always been notoriously susceptible to Tall Poppy/ Underdog Syndrome—a condition that sees us scorn anyone who's having an okay day into submission, only to elevate them to dizzying heights just before they break.

It's a vicious, fickle cycle. It's probably the closest thing we have to a "modern Australian culture."

But perhaps that's being too cynical. Perhaps the bin chicken's day in the sun actually marks a fundamental change in our society. A new age of self-awareness. Maybe we've all finally realised that, despite it's creepy Nosferatu vibe, the ibis isn't some smelly, putrid plague on our cities. It's just a bird.

A bird with hopes and dreams. An optimist.

A bird that never gives up thinking that maybe, just maybe, it will finally find what it's been looking for in the next bin it rummages through.

Perhaps Briggs said it best, speaking recently on the ARIAs red carpet. "Everyone calls them 'bin chickens,'" he said. "That's unfair. The ibis just lives in the world you created, scumbags."