Excited koels do have noticeably bulgy eyes. See below answers to the November Redeye quiz.
From: Geoffrey Dabb [
Sent: Thursday, 21 November 2013 9:31 AM
To:
Subject: [canberrabirds] Redeyes answers (2)
21 – Buff-banded Rail; 22 – Purple Swamphen (the eye borrowed for the 2-eyed Lyrebirds); 23 – O-b Oriole; 24 – Olive Whistler ; 25 – Aust Spotted Crake; 26 – E Koel, male and female. 13 out of the 26 would be a good score, I think. The most difficult were 5 and 25, particularly if you had never looked a coot in the eye. 22 had a trace of the swamphen’s shield and the pink rim of the spotless showed in 16. I chose only a moderately bulgy eye for the chough. Other species can be a little bulgy when excited eg the male koel at 26. Iris colour can vary according to sex and age eg young birds often have dull brown eyes. I could have made it easier by showing more of the faces, but that would have been a different kind of thing, not appropriate for elite bird-identifiers.
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From: Philip Veerman [
Sent: Friday, 27 December 2013 10:44 AM
To:
Subject: [canberrabirds] 5 Koels at home
I have been hearing 1 or 2 Koels throughout this season, near home but not especially close. At 7 a.m. today they were clearly closer than usual. I got up (& out) to check. There were 5 adult Koels, centred around the front of 22 Castley Circuit (the back yard jungle / jumble is full of fruiting plums). Two males and 2 females perched in the same tree, whilst one other male was flying circuits around & calling. These all seen simultaneously. From the noise there might even have been more than just one flying around. Of the 4 perched in the tree, 3 were near the top and noisy throughout, one female low in the tree was not calling. Apart from the usual calls there was a repeated almost rosella-like single note. The two males perched about a metre apart and near the female appeared to be displaying to each other, sitting with wings very drooped and tails held spread (unlike the usual tight plumage posture). I think one had its eye showing obviously big (a bit like Choughs do). This does not match the display mentioned in HANZAB. One Pied Currawong was closely inspecting the female Koel from all angles within about 15 to 30 cm for about 10 minutes (ignoring the 2 males). At one time it snapped at its tail in a flutter fly through attack but the Koel showed no response whatever to any of this. A Red Wattlebird also inspected them for a few metres lower in the tree. After about 15 minutes of that they started to fly around with a lot of the usual chasing. I haven't before encountered that many Koels in a group, so obviously interacting.
Philip Veerman
Kambah ACT 2902
