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Last updated on March 6th, 2018 at 12:31 am
Thursday morning. Bulletin creative director Jeff Young’s balcony. Mode-one infant kookaburras:
There are millions of kookaburras in the big city. These are three of them.
UPDATE. This gang gets around. From reader Stephen W. in north Sydney:
- How can one tell they are kookaburras? They have masks on.Posted by El Cid on 2006 05 18 at 01:13 PM • permalink
- Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree-ee,
Eatin’ all the gumdrops he can see-ee.
Ha-ha hee-hee-hee.
Ha-ha hee-hee-hee.I’m sure I’m not the only one who remembers that song. Glad to finally see what one looks like.
😀
Posted by Barbara Skolaut on 2006 05 18 at 01:19 PM • permalink
I’m sure I’m not the only one who remembers that song.
A Girl Scout camp standard, Barbara. Except the last two lines of that verse as we sang it went:
Stop, kookaburra, stop, kookaburra
Save some there for meSo, do kookaburras actually like gumdrops?
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 05 18 at 01:32 PM • permalink
- I thought it goes:
Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree
Merry, merry king of the bush is he
Laugh, kookaburra, laugh, kookaburra
Gay your life must bePosted by James Waterton on 2006 05 18 at 02:11 PM • permalink
- It can’t be right. They don’t laugh that effeminately.Posted by James Waterton on 2006 05 18 at 02:12 PM • permalink
- As someone mentioned ‘possum, I’ll ask the obvious question:
How do Kookaburras taste?
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 05 18 at 02:58 PM • permalink
- They laugh like that because they shit on the balcony, right?Posted by Gary from Jersey on 2006 05 18 at 03:26 PM • permalink
- James Waterton has it.Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 05 18 at 05:45 PM • permalink
- A factoid I read somewhere so it must be true:
The sound that the dolphin Flipper made on his TV show/movies etc was actually a doctored kookaburra call – dolphins don’t make any vocalisations.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 05 18 at 05:51 PM • permalink
- Let’s settle this:
Written By: Marion Sinclair
Copyright UnknownKookaburra sits in the old gum tree
Merry, merry king of the bush is he
Laugh, Kookaburra! Laugh, Kookaburra!
Gay your life must beKookaburra sits in the old gum tree
Eating all the gum drops he can see
Stop, Kookaburra! Stop, Kookaburra!
Leave some there for me!Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree
Counting all the monkeys he can see
Stop, Kookaburra! Stop, Kookaburra!
That’s not a monkey that’s meKookaburra sits on a rusty nail
Gets a boo-boo in his tail
Cry, Kookaburra! Cry, kookaburra!
Oh how life can be!Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 05 18 at 06:01 PM • permalink
- I was always led to believe that another claim to fame of the kookaburra is that they are world’s largest kingfisher, but Mr Google seems to be not so sure.
Can anyone clarify?
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 05 18 at 06:05 PM • permalink
- So, Tim, is the kookaburra song originally Australian, or just something Americans made up because of the cool name? ;-pPosted by Barbara Skolaut on 2006 05 18 at 06:14 PM • permalink
- Brush tailed possum (Australian) here, ring tailed possum here
The kooka photo is great. Thanks for the recording of their calls – I hear it in the morning and evening at my place (eat your hearts out you expats!!)
Possum or Bandicoot soup anyone?
*Note: bandicoots eat rockmelons, too. I’ve had to fence my self-sprouted rockmelon plant – and it’s full of rockmelons. Kae = 12, Bandicoots = 3 rockmelons!!
- IIRC Margos Maid they are members of the Kingfisher family. A real predator in the wild although sometimes they can be hand fed on landings,fences etc. just like those in Tim’s photo. Young Kooky birds are not as timid as their parents. They like raw meat and I have often hand fed them with little balls of mince. Sometimes they will return each morning for a free hand out then suddenly they may stop coming altogether. Not like Magpies & Butcher birds who will roll up every day demanding breakfast.
Came across two Cassowarys on the road to Cape Tribulation on Wednesday. Now there’s a pretty bird but agressive at times.
- #25, They were imported there in the 1930s to provide the spooky jungle maniacal laugh soundtrack in Tarzan movies.
That is exactly what I thought of when I heard that soundfile: that’s the bird call in all those old jungle movies! Brought back nostagic memories of Saturday afternoons and old movies on black-and-white TV. However, I pictured some exotic multi-hued parrot, or a lethal-looking raptor, not the Aussie version of Tweety Bird.
- #28 correct mm, they are the largest of the kingfisher family.
#7 pretty sure a kookaburra wouldn’t touch a gum drop. they’re carnivorous, feeding on snakes, lizards, insects and the like. their m.o. is to beat their prey to death.
as far as crazy birds go, the galah would have to be right up there. they are the galoots of the bird world. loopy at the best of times, the antics they can get up to after a good feed of wheat can have you splitting your sides (the wheat forments and the birds literally become drunk).
- Grimmy
Having seen kookaburras munching on snakes for breakfast, I think that the best option is the payment of protection mince.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 05 18 at 08:01 PM • permalink
- BTW the ‘kook’ in ‘kookaburra’ is pronounced the same as ‘cook’, not to rhyme with the American pronunciation of ‘duke’ (’dook’).
Jane Pauley grew up with that song. When she came here with the Today show during the 1987 America’s Cup, she was surprised to learn she’d been pronouncing it wrongly all those years.
Posted by David Morgan on 2006 05 18 at 08:15 PM • permalink
- #28- Kookaburras are a mutant kingfisher. We don’t have them at our new place, but the old house had four of the buggers who used to come around to sponge food- they used to fly into the lounge room and perch on the sofa- it was like something out of Hitchcock. They used to send the local noisy mynahs into a pink fit due to their habit of scoffing noisy mynah fledglings.
We also had owls, rainbow lorikeets, eastern rosellas and a blue heron as regular visitors, and I had a ringtail possum take up residence in one of my motorcycle helmets. Ringtails are nowhere near as obnoxious as the more common brushtail- they’re quiet and polite, unlike their bigger cousins who sound like the legions of the undead while tearing one off and gallop around on iron roofs like a drunken All Black scrum in tags. Bastards.
If kookaburros are gay, why are there so many of them?
Duh—they adopt.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 05 18 at 08:28 PM • permalink
- We had a Kookaburra that tamed us in Sydney.
He’d come off worst in a fight, had lost an eye, it was raining, he was bleeding, and hungry, and weak, and bedraggled, and just waiting to die. Didn’t even have enough energy to flee from us.
So we hand-fed him some sausage mince. Carefully, those beaks are sharp.
Some years later…
He brought along his whole family, and by this time they wouldn’t accept anything other than thinly-sliced steak. Which they duly “tenderised” by beating it against the fence, the same thing they do to snakes.
They’re birds with character.
- #38
paying protection mince
Oh, and this one, “Shooting Gallery”.
These are my photos, and I figured out how to put them on the web. I’m getting ejumicated in the majik of uploading.
- Wow. That actually makes me homesick! I haven’t felt that way in ages! Wanna see lorrikeets in the heart of North Sydney? They come to my balcony. Check it out here.nullPosted by Harry Heidelberg on 2006 05 18 at 08:44 PM • permalink
- You want birds, we have birds, they are eating me out of house and home, and the noise, lucky I’m getting old and going deaf. We even have the occassional tasty possum. Local Birds
- Like a lot of other loud, obnoxious and pushy types, noisy mynahs are an immigrant to Queensland from down south. (We did rescue a baby one though, and raised it until it was ready to bugger off). They are pushing out a few natives. Be careful if you’ve got kookaburras around if you have a rodent problem- baiting rats and mice makes them go outside (hopefully) to croak, anf kookies pick them up asd an easy meal- it sends them blind. We’ve got a huge murder of crows around the new place and some of the sods are the size of a bloody condor; there’s been a few owls calling lately, and I’m trying to encourage them as they will attack crows on sight. Good for keeping down rodents etc as well. The butcher birds resident at the old place seem to have followed us over, along with a tribe of asian house geckos. When I was a whippersnapper in Rockhampton, the local am radio (nothing else then) had a resideint kookaburra called “Jacko”, who would come on the air at about 3pm and call, then read out a list of rug monkeys who were having a birthday that day, and the location of a presso he’d left. Great scam for the station (4RO) and the sprogs who scored an extra gift. Kookies were also the mascot/logo for Movietone News. My local vet specialises in making prosthetic beaks for ones that have damaged theirs- fairly common with window strikes.
- The Top 40 Australian Bird Songs
Kookaburra at number 13.
Posted by David Morgan on 2006 05 18 at 09:11 PM • permalink
- OK, If you don’t like crows, the Channel Billed Cuckoo is the bird for you. Here’s some that grew at my place. They toss the eggs out of crows’ nests and lay their eggs for the crows to raise. Then in summer they come back and collect their kids. They also make a racket (noise), calling at all times of the day and night.
- To all our American cousins, ‘Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree’ is indeed a song sung in Australian kindergardens and Primary schools since time began. Tim would have probably sung the song at school himself.
I had the shock of my life when, as a guest of a school in Shanghai, they sang this as part of their performance. I was a very proud aussie indeed, it also proves that the world is really smaller than we think.
- #54 David
That’s a great site. So many of the birds visit my place (even though I don’t see them, I hear them). Thanks for the link.And the indian mynah was introduced because the settlers didn’t think the Aussie birds had pleasant songs?
Noisy miners are plentiful near my place, they will let you know when a snake or other danger is near, too. I have noticed in the last 12 months that Indian mynahs have moved onto my estate, 7 ks from the town.
I also have babblers which have an interesting call.
- The house in which I grew up in Southern California backed up against a storm drain (before they bulldozed all the trees and bushes and relined it with concrete), @50’ across and 20’ deep. Brought us a steady stream of raccoons, possums, snakes, etc.
The possums never made it as far as the street in front of hte house, what with getting our apricots, peaches and plums, and wandering in the neighbor’s back yard, from whence they never seemed to escape.
Turns out he grew up in West Virginia during the depression, and two of his favorite foods were possum and squirrel pie. Offered to share some pie with us, but I’d seen the possum before it got baked…
He had to make do with possum, as there weren’t any tree squirrels locally, and nobody with a lick of sense would eat a ground squirrel; and not just because plague is endemic amonst them.
- #53 – Speaking of prosthetics – the 1995 IG Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to Gregg A. Miller of Oak Grove, Missouri, for inventing Neuticles—artificial replacement testicles for dogs, which are available in three sizes, and three degrees of firmness.
REFERENCES: US Patent #5868140#55 – Crows are smart and soon learn the range of a shotgun using number 4 shot. When I was a youngun, murders of them were stripping our vineyard bare. My father caught a young one, put a bit of string around its leg and tied it to a fence. All the adults landed next to it and wouldn’t leave. He shot the lot. Bit cruel maybe, but he had to make a living.
My mother made him let the young one go afterwards.
Posted by Whale Spinor on 2006 05 18 at 09:55 PM • permalink
- #55- I’d love to get hold of some; cuckoos are great, what I’d be like if I was a bird- dump your sprogs on some other unsuspecting slob (preferably one that’s obnoxious as well, like farking jackdaws) then goof off for a while, picking up the little sods when they’re fully grown and capable of bludging off someone else.
Crows have ben in plague numbers ever since councils stopped you shooting the bastards, and they’re getting huge from the abundance of garbage to feed on. I remember my old man shot one once when they were stealing eggs from the chook run, and hung the carcass on the side of the chook pen as a warning- there were dozens of them circling and calling. My mum got so worried they were going to attack us that she took us inside and shut all the windows. I reckon a bogors is too good for those ugly, noisy scavaging sods.
- Parakeet is seppo for budgie. Loikeets are parrots who get shitfaced on fermented flower nectar and have rolling brawls in the street, occasionally getting run over- the avian version of Anthony Mundine fans.
We’ve got a heap of whistler ducks in the creek up the road, and they look about table ready- the local plod may get a little excited if I sneak up on them and introduce the cute, delicious little scamps to Mr Ruger and his hundreds of balls.
BTW- I’m always happy to chomp on a goose- I was bitten by one of the vicious turds when a little tacker, and I see it as getting even; a worthy bird, mindlessly violent and tasty.
- #62
Wood ducks, or woodies, they are everywhere here. A menace if you hit one flying at night – a flock flew across the road in front of me one night and took out my driver’s side rear view mirror. Could have been expensive, but only cost me $10. It’s good to live in the country.
Don’t much like duck myself – too rich.
Speaking of menaces, there are flying foxes which roost for about 6 months of the year at the creek in town. They are horrible, and I’d rather they not compete with me for stonefruit, which I love.
- Hmmm.
Do they really just come on up to the balconies like that down there?
Posted by memomachine on 2006 05 18 at 10:57 PM • permalink
- I’ve eaten flying fox in Vanuatu- not bad, but a bit fruity. Unfortunately all the local ones who wing up being cooked by powerlines are a tad over-done, and a bit crunchy. The dawgs seem to find them palatable though. My dad had a tame one named Fred, who used to hang upside down off the lattice on the rear verandah while he fed the fleabag slices of mango and pawpaw- he wound up getting the ol’ sparky treatment, hanging off the wire for a few weeks until he rotted enough to drop off; our old boxer found him, and sat behind the couch munching away on poor old Fred. We had to bury him beneath galvanised iron with a breezeblock on top to stop the hound disinterring the crunchy corpse.
- ed: Yes! Although usually in suburbs with a lot of native trees.
Balcony railings are an excellent vantage point for them – high up, often over-looking grass – so they can spot prey and swoop.
Of course if they can cadge a free feed off a sucker of an owner, so much the better!
I used to get 10 of the blighters lined up on my balcony once they learned that “easy touch lives here”. Moving slowly, you can sidle right up to most and they’ll eat from your hand (the beak’s not that sharp). But best not to feed ‘em too much.
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 05 18 at 11:08 PM • permalink
- #67
Ed, maaate, these are NOT plastic birds!
I saved some brown burrowing frog tadpoles from a puddle at the front of my house after a bit of rain and popped them into an icecream container, just to see what they’d become when they became (?). I fed them a nugget of dried dogfood every day. Then I noticed, before they grew legs, that they were disappearing from their artificial pond. This was the culprit, like shooting fish in a barrell – the clever so and so pushed the top off the container and was fishing out the tadpoles. He’s a butcher bird.
The view of the ocean in the first kookaburra photo is magnificent, too.
My mother made him let the young one go afterwards.
To pass the warning to the others, heh heh heh…
Imassie — Lemme get this straight… the greenies want the flying animals killed because of where they’re choosing to fly?
So what exactly is the difference between greenies and cracker duck hunters…?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 05 18 at 11:29 PM • permalink
- Habib, have you tried baked echidna? Very tasty, sweet and fatty. Fruitbat gave me a waking nightmare I return to whenever thoughts of Townsville by night surface. I was riding my bike home from nightshift, no helmet, of course, when I careered into one face-first. Course the stupid thing panicked and dug its claws deeply into the back of my head. Tumbled from the bike and staggered around for minutes trying to tear the bloody thing from my face. Eventually got it off to discover the incident had been witnessed by the entire front bar of the Spearthrowers Arms. You could hear them cackling from Maggie Island.
- They’re great birds. My folks live down the coat at Narooma and they get tons of wild birds on their patio scrounging for a free buffet, including a little family group of kookaburras.
My dad frequently feeds them mince by hand, but carefuly. The expression on their face is a fairly accurate indication of their personalities, they don’t readily make a distinction between the piece of chopped meat and the fingers holding it, I found that out the I-need-a-bandaid way. Then it’s a quick hop over to a convenient post to beat the thing to death. Kookaburras rock, and those baby ones are awful cute
- #70 Kae, I had an almost identical experience when I was a kid. Our neighbours removed a decaying above ground swimmng pool, and it rained, filling up the massive pit. So I grabbed hundreds of tadpoles out of the acidental pond, and hoped to raise them into frogs in a old fish tank.
Then one day, I go out onto the patio and there’s two magpies perched on the edge treating my taddies like a goddamn Sizzlers buffet! Bastards!
- Apparently written by Marion Sinclair for a contest which she won for the Victorian Girl Guides, Kookaburra song.
- #74- Never tried spiny anteater, but the indigines are certainly partial to them, as are fox terriers. I’ve had dugong and turtle, and they’re numbawun kaikai. Do you reckon the writer of the script for Alien was in the front bar that night and witnessed the furry facehugger wrapped around your bonce? Did the little sod try slipping you some tongue while he had you in his embrace? (I won’t go further, but many bat species are known to disply fierce erections when agitated or angry……)
- Great posts, Habib! All of ‘em. I’ve been laughing for the better part of an hour.Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 05 19 at 12:56 AM • permalink
- #83 and also spatchcockPosted by Margos Maid on 2006 05 19 at 01:59 AM • permalink
- #84 Bah – atroposified again!Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 05 19 at 02:07 AM • permalink
- Fruitbats really are bastards- rats with wings. They carry the lyssa virus, and their prjectile-launched kak is like araldite- it’ll take the paint clean off your car.
An acquintance of mine made the dubious decision to get totally Helen Kellered in Bowen, and camped out in the open in a paddock next to a stand of stonefruit.
Awoke the next morning glued inside his sleeping bag by a thick coating of multicoloured and malodorous guano, and his head encased in bright purple poop. Had to burn the sleeping bed and have his head shaved by a most reluctant Italian barber.
- #53 Habib,
Asian House Geckos?. I must have some!. (ever see “The man with two brains”?. Leapin’ lizards!. Yes, we have those too.)Posted by Daniel San on 2006 05 19 at 04:22 AM • permalink
- Kookas have a long, multi-tiered laugh all around Australia, rising to a crescendo in the middle, and tapering off.
All Kookas, except those in Coen, Cape York where I spent a pleasant couple of days at the end of last year. The local Coen Kookaburras would laugh up to the crescendo – and stop – half way through their usual call. Blew me away – I wish I had a recording of them.
I asked a couple of the local Aborigines whether that was the normal local Kooka call, and they looked at me as if I had two heads, and confirmed that was how the Kookaburras called.
Has anyone else found FNQ Kookaburra calls strange?
- The kookaburras in southern Qld have blue feathers in their wings as well- I thought it was a common feature to them, showing their kingfisher heritage.
As to Asian House Geckos, if you wanr some leave your car parked in the New Farm/Newstead/Hamilton area of Brisbane overnight, and you’ll have a half dozen of the sucker-footed hitch-hikers attached to the underbody; in a few weeks you’re house will be gecko city.They’re good for keeping down skeeters and such, but shit all over the place, bark and click like a malfunctioning robot dog and occasionly drop off the ceiling and land on your face like a clammy gimp mask. They also give cats explosive diahorrea, so they’re not all bad. They are partly chameleonic as well, being normally almost translucent but able to pattern match their background. They got loose from ANL wharf in the early ‘80s, but Immigration hasn’t been able to rpound them up and cart them off to Woomera.
We’ve got a huge mopoke (tawny frogmouth) on our clothesline at the moment, hence all the crows have buggered off to serenade another part of town with their dulcet song. We also have a large population of pheasants and scrub turkeys in residence, and we’re less than 4kms from the gpo.
- Gay kookaburras? Nah, never seen that.
But they do have some strange family arrangements. You often see several adult males in the one family, but only one is allowed to mate with mum. All share the baby-feeding.
In recreational areas they get used to being fed and lose all fear of humans. I have had one fly past my face, taking a steak out of my mouth. I was not my intention to feed it; I was just taking the first bite of a steak sandwich. The bird allowed me to keep the two slices of bread.
- Youngest daughter Devs saw the kookaburra pic and began singing the song. A standard in Seppo schools too. Australian cultural imperialism at work. (You can keep the beetroot). Kookshot is now the desktop background on the laptop in the kicthen.
Local activity: murder of crows that freak me out when they alight on my lawn. Get thee hence, Lucifer, go curse someone else! Several varieties of hawk that swoop in on chicadees, etc., with sudden audible whoosh of wing and explosion of feathers. Small nesting birds ganging up on the hawks, dive bombing them, pecking their heads in flight to drive them off, always good. Cardinals, blue jays (sort of a like streamlined blue kook, same attitude, minus the mocking laugh and powerbeak), tufted titmice, hummingbirds, robins, all the usual New England avifauna. Canada geese and swans in the pond down the street. And wild turkeys that clear the birdfeeder when they come out of the woods, with their slow, stately over-sized pigeon head-bobbing gait, standing about 3 feet and a half tall, all beak, big ass, claw and edge of violence nervous tic personality disorder. If you ever doubted birds are descended from therapods, check these guys out. Aggressive survivors in woods rotten with coyotes, but dumb as doors, will attack their own reflection in a dark-colored car panel, and win.Posted by crittenden on 2006 05 19 at 09:37 AM • permalink
- I think I’d like kookaburras; I get the feeling they don’t take much crap from anything.
We’ve got one little species of bird here in North Hollywood, not sure what it is, maybe nine inches beack to skinny tail, slate gray color, with three white “D-Day” stripes on each wing. Not sure of the breed but I think they think they’re p-47’s. I saw one beating the crap out of a full-size crow in mid-air (must have got too close to the little critter’s nest). I mean it was just flying rings around the bastard, pecking everything it could reach, and all the crow was trying to do was leave.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 05 19 at 09:51 AM • permalink
- Kookaburras are cheap alarm clocks, assuming you want to wake up at dusk. It’s one that you miss when you’re not in Australia, like I am now. They sound better than Cockatoos, and are better behaved. I don’t think Cockatoos have been mentioned here, another Oz bird of flight. They don’t attack people like in Hitchcock’s Birds, but they eat houses. Yes, be afraid if you own a house of wood.
Kookaburra is also the name of a famous cricket ball.
- So people in Singapore and the States learnt the Kookaburra song as children – yet another sign of Howard’s cultural imperialism! 🙂Posted by Villeurbanne on 2006 05 19 at 10:33 AM • permalink
- Eating Canada goose, can do. Most of the ones I see have parked themselves on a golf course or median strip, however, where shooting is a big no can do. They enjoy crapping on freshly mown lawns. A few years ago, there was a big flap when some duffer claimed he had been attacked by one and plocked it with a driver, popping one of its eyeballs out of its head. Animal cruelty charges ensued.Posted by crittenden on 2006 05 19 at 10:38 AM • permalink
- It’s illegal to shoot Canadian geese in Ohio, which is a shame since they’re filling up the state faster than illegal aliens crossing the Mexican border. Although the EPA did finally break down and allow professional hunters to come into Wright-Patterson AFB and shoot them because they’d become a danger to the aircraft. Gave the carcasses to the local food pantries, as if those poor people didn’t have enough trouble. Big, fat, greasy looking birds.
- The average Canada goose produces two pounds of crap a day. I forget where i read this, but from the condition of my mom’s lakefront backyard, i can vouch.
I was in a crosswalk by my office one day when a peregrine falcon swooped right by my head with most of a pigeon in its talons. Sometimes you’ll encounter bits of pigeons on the sidewalks here in Norfolk, as they have a tendency to explode when hit by falcons travelling at 170+ miles per hour.
- Hmmm.
You should see the crowds of those Canadian geese around here in New Jersey.
It’s getting to the point where the anti-hunting and anti-gun crowd are calling for limited hunting of the things.
Shows you both how bad it is, and where their priorities lie.
Posted by memomachine on 2006 05 19 at 04:34 PM • permalink
- #99 – Does it look like this?
The behavior you describe sounds a lot a mockingbird’s. Not only will they go after crows, but also cats, and sometimes people, typically during breeding season.
Also, their repertoire of calls is absolutely awesome.
Posted by Bashir Gemayel on 2006 05 19 at 05:32 PM • permalink
- A few folks have referred to us becoming ‘slaves’ to feeding regular visiting Kookaburras. I particularly liked the line ‘easy touch lives here’.
My folks live in retirement on the glorious Great Ocean Road and have regular visits by Kookas, Magpies, Lorikeets, Honeyeaters, King Parrots, Galahs and Cockatoos.
It’s hilarious watching Mum and Dad responding to their individual calls for a feed throughout the day. The only ones discouraged are the Cockatoos who will, as someone else mentioned, eat your timber house as well as scare away the others. My 80+ year old father keeps a ‘Master Blaster’ kid’s pump-action water pistol at the ready to scare away the Cocky’s. All the others seem to get on famously together. Priceless!Posted by AlphaMikeFoxtrot on 2006 05 19 at 06:08 PM • permalink
- As much as they are disliked crows are smart fellas and learn fast. Apparently they have already figured out how to avoid being a victim to the cane toad by only feeding on the lower portions of their road kill thus avoiding the poison glands around the head.
Then there was the crow in Japan that knew how to work in with pedestrian traffic lights so as to pick up scraps on the road without getting bowled over.
My ex brother -in- law had a hatred for crows during the time he worked on a sheep station because they would attack new born lambs and pluck out their eyes. His revenge was to set up a plate of raw eggs on an old 4 gallon drum packed with bolts & nails; a stick of gelignite underneath. Waited at a safe distance in a nearby shed with the plunger and when the murder descended…you can guess the rest.
He had to organize other farm hands to move in & out of the shed prior to the bang so as to confuse the birds because the buggers could count up to about 4 or 5 and maybe figure someone was still in the shed.
- #80 Spiny Norman, #83 kae;
Habib’s comments are always pearlers, however my favourite is still this one.
Posted by HisHineness on 2006 05 20 at 02:03 AM • permalink
- Bashir — Looks much like. As I said, my local birds have three pronounced and symmetrical white bands on each wing, perfect D-Day markings. Could be a local flava, I guess.Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 05 20 at 03:41 AM • permalink
- #103 Imassie
Nope. Crows say faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaark, faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaark.
Graham Kennedy coined it, and got chucked off the telly!
Then I read #113, Stevo. Nevermind.
Speaking of “Attack Birds”, noone has spoken of the savage attacks of magpies (maggies) on kids, and others, particularly pushbike riders and the ends to which people go to avoid attack by the nesting maggies. The idiot kids next door to me decided to stir up the birds. The babblers left (I loved them), but the maggies turned, and every year the maggies nested in the same tree and attacked the kids next door in the nesting season. Hee hee.
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