Kate McKinnon Is Obsessed With Our Beloved Bin Chicken

The American actress behind some of Saturday Night Live’s best hits fell truly, madly and deeply in love with some of our humble wildlife during the filming of Joe vs Carol in Brisbane last year.

Speaking to Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show recently, McKinnon said that she was struck speechless by scenes of “loose wallabies” and kangaroos scattered across the Queensland hinterland.

But McKinnon said she encountered “the most beautiful bird I had seen in my life” on her first day in Australia, describing a creature with “beautiful white Plumage” and a “long elegant beak”, just walking around Brisbane’s CBD.

After interrogating a passing stranger for information about the beautiful, mysterious bird, McKinnon said she was given a surprisingly frank answer.

“He was like ‘Oh that’s a Bin Chicken’,” the actress said. “What I learnt is that the ibis is called a Bin Chicken because they eat garbage out of the dumpsters…(Australians) have about eight songs about how much they hate them.”

Look Kate, hate is a strong word. The humble Bin Chicken nearly took out The Guardian’s prestigious Bird of the Year back in 2017! They are noble creatures.

And really, our animosity towards the ibis is grounded in guilt. Watching an ancient bird whose habitat was once lush marshlands and streams, as it ferrets through the contents of a plastic bag in a shopping centre car park, hurts the soul. We can do naught but lash out.

I say this knowing too well that one of the ibis’s greatest strengths is its ability to organise their pooping in ruthless formations, and are able to coat a parked car with so much shit that it strips off the clear coat from the paint job. God bless the bin chicken.

Joe vs Carole comes to streaming services on March 3.