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Investigation of strange cricket like calls in our
backyard around 10 pm on Friday night revealed 3 immature Southern Boobooks,
identified by their very dark eye-patches and very light colouring under.
They were there for at least 30 minutes and were surprisingly tame, often
sitting in exposed positions such as the overhead wires and the neighbour's
cyclone fence, repeatedly making the trills which seemed to be contact
calling (no traditional calls were heard). They seemed to be fully grown
(if not rather larger than expected), though they flew rather clumsily.
Eye-shine was red.
In over 25 years of pretty serious birdwatching, I
have never come across this phenomenon before.
Jack Holland
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