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Tag: kookaburra

Midwinter on the Fleurieu’s southern edge: “laughing” killer

 

 

Q:  if you walk in Deep Creek Conservation Park’s old-growth stringybark forest, what is the largest carnivorous (as distinct from omnivorous) fauna species that you are highly likely to see at close quarters?

A: Dacelo novaeguineae, pictured above, in said forest at 11 am on 20 June 2023. (photo is ©️ Doug Spencer)

Better known as “the laughing kookaburra”, this usually-sedentary tree-dweller lives and hunts in woodlands and forests.

It is the world’s largest kingfisher, albeit one that generally never – or very rarely – is able to hunt fish. (however, any human silly enough to place a lidless aquarium on an exposed verandah, within range of any kookaburras’ very acute eyesight…)

Most Australian humans’ attitude to this bird is anthropomorphic, sentimental, and unconnected to its actual behaviour/intent.

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McGowangrad, winter ‘22: #9 in series (third of three “strangers in Paradise”)

 

This kookaburra, perched on a grave cross, has something in common with most of the humans who have been buried in Perth’s largest cemetery over the past 123 years.

In 2022, most living WA humans do not know what it is; most of them, in fact, have a quite wrong view of kookaburras’ “place” in southwestern Australia.

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