Actress Kate McKinnon gushes about Australia's ibis birds only to learn they're known locally as 'bin chickens'

Actress Kate McKinnon made a hilarious discovery about Australia's white ibis birds during her recent visit Down Under.

The Saturday Night Live star was on our shores recently while filming the mini-series Joe vs. Carole, during which she discovered locals did not admire the long-legged bird as much as she did.

"My first day [in Australia] I was walking on the street, and I saw what I thought was the most beautiful bird I've ever seen in my life," she gushed on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. "And I was like, 'What is this… this majestic heron just loose in the street? My god, I've been blessed here! This is a sight!'"

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The actress was genuinely curious and asked a bystander, who replied: "Oh, that's a bin chicken.' What I learned was that the ibis is called a bin chicken because they eat garbage — out of the dumpsters — and that is their pigeons, and they have about eight songs about how much they hate them. And to me this was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."

McKinnon will star in the limited series Joe vs. Carole, which is a dramatisation of 2020's Netflix true-crime documentary Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness. Joe vs Carole is available to stream on Stan on Friday 4 March.

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The actress will play Carole Baskin, an animal rights activist who learns that fellow animal lover Joe "Exotic" Schreibvogel is breeding and using his big cats for profit, so she makes it her mission to shut him down.

"I thought, 'That's a kooky lady. She'd be fun to play.'" McKinnon said in a recent behind-the-scenes featurette for the series. "And then, as I did more research, I began to really admire her. I really want people to see that she is a kick-ass businesswoman, a very passionate activist, and is a survivor." 

Joe vs Carole is available to stream on Stan on Friday 4 March.