There are various stories about moments when people feel they’ve brought a bird along in their luggage. Well last Tuesday in Geelong I wandered down the street about 8pm and there came the unmistakeable sound of a koel going like mad. This was in Newtown in the grounds of the former Hermitage school in Pakington Street. I phoned Trevor Pescott (the local Ian Fraser) who said there had been a handful of reports in recent years, mainly in Newtown, and one in a previous year, so far as we could work out, might have been from the very same tree my chap was calling from. I heard the call at various times over the next few days. It might or might not be surprising that the ongoing BA atlas has no koel records for anywhere near Geelong, the closest being to the east of Melbourne. However there are scattered records further west, even in Hamilton in the Western District. I would report this to Birdline if Alastair wasn’t a bit negative about this species.
