{"id":50971,"date":"2026-07-15T05:51:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T05:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/50971\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T05:51:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T05:51:16","slug":"townsville-gardener-witnesses-garbage-guts-tree-frog-preying-on-sunbird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/50971\/","title":{"rendered":"Townsville gardener witnesses ‘garbage guts’ tree frog preying on sunbird"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brigitte Szabo was watering her garden at her Townsville home when some movement caught her eye.<\/p>\n

“A pair of sunbirds were flying around and chirping and carrying on as they do and then all of a sudden this great big green frog launched itself,” Ms Szabo said.<\/p>\n

It was an unexpectedly brutal display of a predator and prey in action, right there in her garden.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Brigitte Szabo says she often sees frogs eating lizards in her yard but was very surprised to see one catch a bird. (Supplied: Brigitte Szabo)<\/p>\n

“It grabbed the bird mid-air and landed on top of a leaf and proceeded to \u2014 I suppose eat him,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I was just astounded. I’ve seen frogs with geckos and lizards and things like that but it was an actual bird. He was a real predator, this frog.”<\/p>\n

‘Garbage guts’ of the wild<\/p>\n

Jodi Rowley, curator of amphibian and reptile conservation biology at the Australian Museum, said most frogs did not eat birds.<\/p>\n

But Dr Rowley says some of the larger types, such as the green tree frog and the white-lipped tree frog, will try to eat just about “anything that moves” if it comes close enough.<\/p>\n

“They are a little bit garbage guts,” she said.<\/p>\n

“They’re all about reflexes; so something that is around and close to their face, if they’re hungry, they’ll give it a go.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Jodi Rowley says large frog species can often be “garbage guts” and attempt to eat very large animals. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Dr Rowley said often a frog might manage to catch something large but after trying to swallow it, would have to give up and spit it out.<\/p>\n

She said frogs were cold-blooded so something large, like a bird or snake, would take some time to digest.<\/p>\n

“They’d just bunker down and try to basically invest all of their energy and blood flow into digesting that meal,” she said.<\/p>\n

While it was rare for a frog to eat a bird, Dr Rowley said she had seen photos of them eating snakes, large lizards and other reptiles.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The white-lipped tree frog (litoria infrafrenata) is Australia’s largest species of frog and is endemic to North and Far North Queensland. (Supplied: Jodi Rowley)<\/p>\n

“I’ve even seen bats being shoved in the mouth of frogs. It’s probably not that common, so it is really cool to see,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I have spent my life searching for frogs and looking at frogs and I have seen probably tens of thousands of frogs and I have never seen a frog eat a bird or something that big.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The olive-backed sunbird measures between 10 and 12 centimetres in length and builds intricate hanging nests from spider webs and vegetation.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 (ABC Open contributor MediaWatcher)<\/p>\n

Also in Townsville, Keeliah O’Keefe witnessed her own rare moment of frog-on-bird violence on her verandah.<\/p>\n

When she saw Ms Szabo’s picture on social media, she shared her own picture of a green tree frog with a finch in its mouth.<\/p>\n

She said she heard strange noises at her door some years ago, and found a frog grabbing a small bird she believed was a double-barred finch.<\/p>\n

“If you didn’t see it yourself or take a photo of it, nobody would have believed you,” she said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Keeliah O’Keefe spotted this frog with a finch at her Townsville home. (Supplied: Keeliah O’Keefe)<\/p>\n

Ms O’Keefe said she felt bad for the bird and “intervened”.<\/p>\n

“I ended up flicking the frog and he let him go,” she said.<\/p>\n

Many frogs threatened<\/p>\n

Dr Rowley said she would encourage members of the community to look after frog habitats in their own gardens.<\/p>\n

“They generally spend their time eating invertebrates, which can be pest species, and they compete with mosquitoes to keep them down so they are a really important part of the environment.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Brigitte Szabo says the frog appeared “fat and content” 4 hours after the hunt. (Supplied: Brigitte Szabo)<\/p>\n

She said home owners should be wary of pesticides they use, keep cats indoors and even do some research on how to make their gardens “frog friendly”.<\/p>\n

Dr Rowley said people could submit photos of frogs to citizen scientist apps such as iNaturalist and provide audio recordings of frog mating calls to the F<\/a>rogID app.<\/a><\/p>\n

“It helps us get a better understanding of how our frogs are doing and how we can make sure we don’t lose any more frog species because a lot of them are threatened with extinction,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brigitte Szabo was watering her garden at her Townsville home when some movement caught her eye. “A pair…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,23,8563,21,36236,99,14033,36237,36235,19551,212,22572],"class_list":["post-50971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-museum","tag-austrlia","tag-bird-eating-frog","tag-brisbane","tag-frog","tag-frog-eats-bird","tag-green-tree-frog","tag-north-queensland","tag-queensland","tag-townsville"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}