canberrabirds

Fw: Koel fledgling in Rivett

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Subject: Fw: Koel fledgling in Rivett
From: "Jack & Andrea Holland" <>
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 08:17:21 +1100
The Koel fledgling was still begging in the same exotic this morning, but interesting to me was a male Koel that was calling as I approached.  It seemed to do an almost complete circuit and then landed about 100 m away, and when I located it a female Koel flew through, making the kek kek kek call which I’ve only recently learnt.  Though I didn’t see any contact with the male, it flew out of the same tree pursued by a Red Wattlebird.
 
While the two birds didn’t seem to interact at all with the fledgling (you need to be within about 20 m to hear it), at least as far as I saw, and were probably never closer than 100 m, this much more obvious presence when fledglings are around correlates with my observations last year which I published in CBN.
 
Jack Holland
 
From:
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2015 8:52 AM
To:
Subject: Koel fledgling in Rivett
 
While walking my dogs this morning my attention was drawn to what I thought was a rather loud begging red wattlebird fledgling.  However, almost immediately I saw a parent RWB several times feeding a bird much larger than itself in a surprisingly open position.
 
Of course once I fetched my binoculars it proved much less willing to show itself, calling from within a dense exotic tree.  However, after about 20 minutes it emerged and then flew into a gum 30-40 m away in an open perch from which it was very easy to confirm as an Eastern Koel, probably a bit older than first thought given it flew well.
 
This happened in the path between Themeda and Mentha Places, at the rear of Tobias parents’ house.  This is the first observation in my local area this year, and as far as I’m aware only the second record after Barbara Allan’s very early fledgling posted on 21 December (I may have missed some?).  So please keep an ear out for them, the next 6 weeks till the end of February seems to be the peak Koel fledgling season.
 
Jack Holland
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