Tag: Laughing Kookaburra

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Birds

The Kooka, the Butcher, the Miner.

A Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae) spent some time scoping out food in the backyard:

He hopped to the ground to retrieve a slice of meat dropped by the cats. .

After a while, a Grey Butcher-bird (Cracticus torquatus) decided the Kooka had out-stayed his welcome.

And some Noisy Miners (Manorina melanocephala) agreed.

The situation developed into a three-way brawl:

The Kookaburra didn’t need this grief! He moved off to the next house north… but once there, roused the ire of even more Miners…

Categories
Birds

Laughing Lovers.

According to much of the data that we read, the Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae) will nest in any hollow that is big enough to fit an adult. Around our way, we only ever see them nesting in arboreal termite mounds (“termitaria” as the birdos like to call them).
In our local parks there is usually no shortage of quite large termitaria, and most of them have the tell-tale holes of Kookaburra nests, either active or abandoned from a previous season.

The Laughing Kookaburra is the largest Kingfisher in the world. Which makes us wonder why this couple of young lovers were excavating a termite nest that was clearly going to be too small for them. Practice, we wondered?