I am still scratching my head over one of your odder
obs. This morning at about 715 I was roused (yet again) by the excited ‘wuh-huh-huh-huh’
of a female koel. When I made it into the street a few minutes later I
saw a female koel fly out of some shrubbery and off down the hill towards lower
Griffith. A male made a half-hearted pursuit and then perched in its
customary cedar, holding something in its bill and making disconsolate soft ‘kar’
sounds. I only got a couple of snaps before my battery expired.
On examining the photographic record, such it is, I find the koel was carrying
a LIVE SNAIL. As I left after the battery failure I can’t tell you
what happened next. I wonder (as we say) whether such behaviour has been
reported before. I can add the information that there are a lot of snails
around at the moment.
