Combined Hunt

Combined Hunts


 

While this isn’t about Kooka's, it did happen while I was waiting for them to arrive.

It was a normal day, people jogging, walking babies, walking dogs.

Completely unaware what was going on right next to them.

There is a full on battle being engaged.

And, it involved a number of species that usually hunt alone.
And, it was done with military precision.
And, all knew their exact roles.

The Players;

The first in were the Australasian Grebes. As a tight bunch, 12 or so birds would drive the fish towards the shore.

5 meters behind them came the Cormorants.

5 meters behind them came the heavy artillery, the Pelicans.

Behind them, more cormorants.

In the air were the Terns & Gulls.

On land they were faced with Egrets & White Faced herons.

But it was how it worked that amazed me.





Pelican mob

 
   Let’s say the Pelicans went in first.

   They are slow & clumsy.

   They would   get a few fish - sure.

   But  the school would soon scatter

   and it would all be over.

 


Now, look at the way it was done, and the way it worked for everyone. No one group reaped more than the other & all got a good feed.

The Strategy;



Sorry - poor photo - but they're small & 50 meters away (Australasian Grebes)

The Grebes are first in. These guys are small, fast and nimble. Their role is to panic the school & drive them towards shore. But these are small birds with small mouths. They can only take on the smallest of fish. They get to pick off the panicked fingerlings, while still driving the school. A lot get past them.

  

behind the Grebes came the Cormorants

Cormorants – bigger, not quite as nimble, but still bloody fast. They are the 2^nd prong to the attack. They sit back a bit. They turn around the fleeing fish, (while getting a feed). The Grebes get a 2^nd crack. All the while the school is getting pushed into the shallows.

Those fish trying to bolt to the south were greeted with this.

pelican push

Those fish that tried to walk on water, well, they got picked off by the Terns & Gulls. 

In the shallows, those that tried to walk on land had to face the Egrets & Herons.
They got a feed while sending the school back towards the Grebes & Cormorants. And don't forget the Pelicans.

The Result:

 

The Aftermath:



10 minutes later

Mother Nature - Always amazing! Mostly Missed!

 

 

 

 

Enjoying the Moment

 

Is there anything better at the end of the day?

 

You know how it is after a tough day.

........You had to hunt all day

hard at toil

……..keep intruders out

local sea eagle

………look after the family. And those bloody, pesky Peewees.

get off my branch

All is done and you get 5 minutes to yourself, to sit on the veranda, chill-out, enjoy the view & just take in the moment.



chillaxing

 

Energize the soul kind of thing…………..but what do I know………………..I’m just a bird.

kookaburra enjoying the moment        
 

Nature can keep us so centred…..if we just take the time to look.

A Prawns Tale

 

Myself, and some school mates were invited over to Brads for lunch.

Me & some mates - I'm the good looking one

 

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon. Sun is shining, the smell of neighbours BBQ’s wafting in the air, Van Morrison playing in the background.

 

 

Chilling out with mates, having a few brews & talking shit, and with a view like this. How good is life?

 



bruiser



Bruiser (Brads mate), was already there. I think he was Brads mate? But he may have been there for crowd control (when we prawns get together – well - things can get a little crazy. We have a bit of a rep as being party animals).He was cool, just a little quiet.

 

 

Soon things started to get a little strange. I looked around & I noticed a few of my mates had split. Now, this is not unusual for a few to split if there was a better offer, but what was better than this?

 

 

A little while later and a few more were missing.

 

I checked with Bruiser. Boy was he pissed. They tend to exude foam from their eye when they're drunk. Such an ugly trait. Anyway, he wasn’t much help.

 

 

killing field

It was then that I twigged. 

 

 

 

We weren’t invited here for lunch! Well, we were, but you know what I mean.

It was then that panic set in. Let me tell you, the others were embarrassing.

I even heard one of them scream "take them, take them". There’s a very slight chance that it might have been me.

that's me bravely cowering in the rear

 

I knew if I could get to the rail, I was a chance to make the water.

Unfortunately, “old mates” didn’t make it. They laid down their lives for me – with maybe a little nudge from me. (Their sacrifice will go down in prawnlore)



almost there - you know, I think I can make it

 

OH BUGGER!!!

 

 

 See, it did contain Kookaburras....

 

Subterfuge

Cuckoos

Asian Koel

 

This off topic, “sort of”, & thanks to Sir David Attenborough. I just watched one of his episodes in “Natural Curiosities – on Cuckoos”.

They let other parents raise their young (brood parasites). They do this by flying in, eating 1 egg, laying 1 egg & fly off (all in a few minutes). The returning parents don’t notice the difference (even though 1 egg is bigger than the others).

If the Cuckoo egg hatches first, it ejects’ the other eggs from the nest. There is this sort of indent in its back to facilitate this, making it easy for him to push them out of the nest. If the others hatch first, their result is the same.

Using that indent in its back, it corals one of the chicks into it. As it’s a fair bit larger, with bigger, strong wings,

look carefully - behind that little pink chick
 is the much larger, darker, baby Koel

it pushes itself backwards till it gets to the edge of the nest & one last push and chick is gone. It will repeat this until all the chicks are gone. The parents don’t seem to notice the imposter, as it has the same call as the other chicks. With the number of different hosts there could be, how do they know to speak the local language? How does it know the chicks call when it’s the first one to hatch?

 Now, what happens next is amazing. Because it is so big it needs more food. More food than a parent would feed a single chick. Not only has it replicated the call of the other chicks, it speeds it up to sound like a brood of chicks calling, so the parents continually hunt as if feeding a number of chicks. Amazing yeah.

Now for the “sort of”.

2 years ago when my Burra Family returned with its fledgling (Bitey), I was tossing down some bits of chicken to them, and I noticed a cheeky pair of Wattle birds would dart in and pinch a piece or two.

Now this was interesting as they are insect/nectar eaters. I had never seen them go for meat before.

They would struggle to get their beaks around it. They looked so clumsy taking off with such a load. It reminded me of the stork delivering babies that you see in cartoons.




They didn’t need to go far to feed their hungry fledgling. It was perched in a tree next door (out of sight, but not out of hearing). It continued like this for a day or so, when one day, impatient for the parents to come back to feed him, he flew down to them. It was then that I got to see him. And what a surprise – he was twice the size of his parents.

What happens next is hilarious. As bub is so big, the parents have to be careful when feeding, not to lose their head. On a couple of occasions they were a bit slow and had to extricate their head from Bub’s gob. Bloody funny to watch (unfortunately none of my photos worked out – so all in this post are from the internet).

How did a insect/nectar eater know to feed the baby Asian Koel meat?

So many questions. How much do we really know.

Nature - what a marvel!

How to age a Kookaburra

How to age a kookaburra

Methuselah (Boss)

Baby Kookas have a fair amount of brown on their necks & under their eye stripe.

They lose this as they get older.

The photos below are of this year's bubs (Brave Baby & Bully Baby - now 8 months old), Last years baby (Bitey - he's 18 months old) & Boss - well, he's as old as Methuselah.

Bully about to surprise Bitey

Bully Baby

 

 

 

Our 1^st model is Bully Baby. He hasn’t lost a lot of his baby plumage yet.

5 months old



 

His twin Brave Baby.

He is starting to lose

his baby browns. 

Brave Baby

   

 

Bitey started off the same way 18 months ago.

It's nearly gone.  

 

 

And then there's boss

 

 

Drop Bears, Killer Kookas & GISHWHES

Is this how a Myth is Born?

 

courtesy: Australian war memorial

 

Every wonder how myths get born?

Well, it could be as simple as GISHWHES.

 

GISHWHES from what I can see, is like a world-wide treasure hunt. Entrants are given a number of tasks to perform.

This year my Niece is an entrant. From her list of challenges;

42. IMAGE or VIDEO. Some regions have legendary monsters like the Loch Ness Monster in Loch Ness, Scotland or the Abominable Snowman in... well, wherever that creature lurks. Catch the mystery monster on camera that haunts your hometown.41 POINTS

So I knocked up this video

And a monster is born………………

killer kookas - an anti add

 

 



Having a Bad Hair Day



Justin Bieber comb over

Bitey came in today not looking his usual good looking self.

He had obviously stuck his head somewhere it shouldn’t have been.

There is much better vision on the video below.

There have been a few detractors to my blog because of my feeding wild birds.

While I do understand their concerns, I'm certain I am enriching their lives more than I detract from it.

And with this case here, I am in a perfect position to remedy Biteys problem, should it require it. That will make a funny video (a bit like giving a cat a pill), and you know it will end badly for me.

Actually I think the world would be a better place if more people did this (it’s hard to be violent & hating, when so in tune with nature).

Kookaburra having a bad hair day

Some random stuff from today (2/8)

Just playing around with the camera this morn, so I thought I would throw up some photos and vid’s from our session.

Brothers from another mother.

 

Some of Brave Baby Burra

This is Brave Baby Burra telling me it's his turn for a feed.

kookaburra feeding - queuing up for a feed        

 

 

Boss Burra came in for a visit

 

 

looking pretty relaxed

 

 

He also wanted a "Selfie"

selfie

 

You know that saying about working with kids or animals....

 

Some bloopers from today;

Biteys “Head Tracking”.
Kookaburra - bloopers#2        

 

Brave Baby Burra “Neck Scratching”
Kookaburra Patting - blooper
 

So a pretty fun day really.

 

 

 

  .



It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the.....

Peewee Grief

(magpie lark)

 

That saying “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog”, is never truer than when describing the Peewee.

Talk about a little bird with big heart.

And, they are pissed off with everyone.

 

get off my branch

 

Doesn’t matter how big or small, if they don’t want you around, you soon get your marching orders.

Sea Eagles flying over, leave with less feathers than they started with.

Crows get mobbed.

They don't like Currawongs or Magpies much either.

And it’s not just the big guys.

This vid is of them "moving on" some Noisy Miners that popped in for a visit. 

peewee grief        



 

Time to keep a Level Head

Kookaburra Head Tracking

 

 

Brave Baby Burra

 

 

 

Soon after my hand feeding started, I made a discovery that blew me away.

I found I could wobble them, move them up, down, back, forth & their head never moves – it remained motionless. Regardless of what their body was doing, their head never moved. I found this amazing.

An example of evolutionary adaptation.

When looking up at them perched high up in the trees, with branches swaying, it is obvious to see why the modification.

What I didn’t know until I googled it, is that birds can’t move their eyes. Unlike us, when we move our head, our eyes move to stay focused (I love google). So Kookaburra need their head to remain stationary to stay focused.

This is called “Head Tracking”

In this slow motion vid of Bitey Burra, notice when landing his head never moves. It remains completely locked on his landing, even though his body & wings are going in all directions.

Kookaburra Head Tracking - Bitey Burra in slow motion        

 

And, it’s not all birds that have this ability. Some species have it, others don’t.

Cats have this ability as well.

This vid is of Brave baby Burra sitting on my hand when it's moving.

kookaburra head tracking #2

Wikipedia has some interesting stuff on bird vision.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_vision