This is the bird of the week in my house, regardless of any national holidays that may or may not have occurred.

Norfolk Island is a tiny island in the Pacific near Australia and New Zealand. He’s one of the many birds described by naturalists traveling with Captain James Cook around the world.

Norfork Island was turned into a penal colony in 1788, which was the beginning of the end for the bird.  In the nineteenth century the island was the place where they sent repeat colonial offenders, criminals who committed crimes after already having been sent to Australian penal colonies on the mainland.  The remote location was a way to isolate the worst of the worst.