Kookaburra Hand Feeding

A Bird on the Hand is worth two in the Bush



the boys ready for a feed

For me this was easy. I had the essentials – an interest in critters, a resident Kookaburra Family & a place for them to land for hand feeding, in my case the veranda rail.

I haven’t been able to get them to land on my hand direct (but I’m working on it). They prefer to land on the rail & hop onto my hand to be fed.

It didn’t take too long before they would group on my back fence, waiting for scrap’s thrown down from the balcony.

From here it wasn’t all that hard to getting them to take food from the rail on a swoop & grab basis.

I started off placing their food 1.5 mitres from where I was leaning. Over the next few weeks, I shortened the distance until they would fly down and grab food sitting next to me (30cm).

Next, I got them used to grabbing food with my hand resting next to the meat.

This allowed me to remove the food as they were swooping down. They soon learned they had to land to be fed.

Kookaburra Feeding - Brave Baby Burra   Kookaburra Feeding - Brave Baby Burra

Once they accept that, start to hold the food in your fingers & take the food to them.

 

When you get them comfortable with that, it’s only a short hop, skip & jump till you’re hand feeding.

Kookaburra Feeding - Feeding Boss#2