No Martin, the Canberra
community is not excessively preoccupied with koels. In case everyone has
forgotten, I asked for reports of koels to be posted on the chat line as (1) I
am writing an article on their occurrence, for CBN (2) not everyone keeps a GB chart,
and besides, postings are available immediately and sometimes provide specific
times which help in pinpointing the number of koels around, and (3) incidental
records for koels are patchy at best – though I would encourage everyone
to put them in. Keep up the good work (ie postings), folks! Particularly as the
season draws on. And while on the subject of koels, I had an interesting
encounter with three of them at about 7am on Christmas morning. Two females and
one male were perched in a coastal banksia adjacent to the carpark at Broulee surf
beach. The two females were facing one another and calling loudly, mostly the “wirra
wirra wirra” call but with a few “ko-el”s thrown in. They
kept this up for a good half hour. The male, meanwhile, sat by, shuffled his
wings, emitted an occasional “ko-el” but mostly just watched on.
They were still at it, but had moved across the road to a casuarina, when I
came out of the surf. It appears to be a good year for cuckoos at the coast,
with Channel-bills, Brush, Shining Bronze, Horsfield’s and Fan-taileds
all calling in and seen around around my patch near Broulee. But no young, as
yet. b
