Wow Martyn! That's so cool! Thanks for sharing this observation. The males were likely fighting over the females. I saw a similar thing happen in Sydney last year between
two males while a female was close by. They both puffed out their feathers, fanned their tails, and "hunched" over, making themselves look as big as possible and gave their "wurroo" calls until the female flew off and then they followed her.
This behaviour has also been described in a paper by Pratt (1970).
Cheers,
Virginia
From: Martyn Moffat <>
Sent: 18 November 2015 07:55
To: Canberra Birds
Subject: [canberrabirds] Five Koels in Backyard
Last night at 8 o’clock I had 3 male Pacific/Eastern Koels in a tree in my backyard. They formed a triangle about 1.5 m from each other. They acted
aggressively to each other with loud calling and what I can only describe as a tail shuffle.
Two females perched on the power line 1 m apart and 5 m from the males.
The noise from their calls was very loud. Some of the neighbours thought that they were OK, others wanted them gone. I thought they were fantastic.
I have never seen 5 Koels so close together before.
