This morning when I was doing my GBS wander, I heard and saw a cacophony (cam you see a cacophony??) of Pied Currawongs some few hundred metres away and I tried to estimate the number.
Then the mob came over to where I was: one, two, … eight, nine. But the bird in the middle of the squawking mob, which included a couple of Magpies, wasn’t a Currawong or a Magpie. In the second or two that I had to observe it, I saw
that it was somewhat smaller than a Currawong and had a round head and no obvious pointed bill.
The stranger dropped into a convenient cypress pine near me and its attackers kept squawking and landing on the tree and a couple tried to probe its thick foliage. I watched for ten minutes or more but no bird emerged. And then the attackers
and I began to lose interest.
My conclusion: an owl, either Boobook or Barn Owl (I didn’t get a long enough look to determine the species) and it has found a refuge for the day in the cypress. My guess is that it is a Boobook simply because they are more common around
here.
David Rosalky
