Happy birding to all for
the New Year.
Well I’m thoroughly koelled out,
what with reading this list on return from Christmas in a Sydney suburb (Coogee)
where the noise made by the resident Koel(s) were worse (more persistent) than
the jets overhead. However I have now
learnt from the list that there was probably only one Koel though it at times sounded
like at least two.
There was also another constant bird call
mostly from the large Moreton Bay? Fig trees lining the street where the Koel generally called from:
four loud rising notes, but I couldn’t see what it was. Only on return home with access to a
Field Guide did I learn that it would also have been the Koel.
Phyl
-----Original Message-----
From: Barbara Allan
[
Sent: Friday, 30 December 2005 6:54 PM
To:
Subject: [canberrabirds] Common
Koels
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
