Kookaburra antics

Kookaburra sits in an old gum tree
Merry king of the bush is he
Laugh Kookaburra laugh
Gay your life must be.

Of course if we lived in a politically correct world I suspect that gay may now be substitued for happy. But then the childhood memories of djd singing this at school would be totally ruined!

So Kookaburra’s – apart from the fact that they have a wonderful song in the early morn that will wake you from a deep sleep far faster than an alarm clock that you definately never set while your are holiday they also have a rather enduring trait that we were told about but didn’t believe until we saw it with our own astounded eyes.

During our wonderful stay in Perth my sister and her husband took us on a tikkie tour of the hills surronding Perth. We went to a garden/park area. Well formed garden area with facilities for bbq’s and picnic’s all very pretty.

We did the circuit and stopped for an ice-cream as it was such a warm day. As we wondered through the grassed area that only an hour ago had been desserted and was now occuppied by several happy families all firing up the bbq’s and stuffing there faces with wonderful smelling meat and other delicious bbq food we passed a sign post directing you around the gardens. It had 3 prongs and one kookaburra sitting on top!

By the way did you know that Kookaburra’s are not native to Western Australia. Apparently some 30 years ago Perth zoo decided to release a ‘batch’ of kookaburra’s into the wild and from there they have just blossomed, bless them 🙂

Anyway I degress, there we stood two rather astounded kiwi’s and a couple of gobsmacked Aussies staring at a Kookaburra no more than 2 metre’s from us, sitting happily in amongst this busy park full of people, who I might add were not paying any attention to this kookaburra.

Faster than you can snap your bra strap back up to the top of your arm after it falls down we had camera’s and video camera’s out capturing the moment. We were enchanted and just absolutely revelling in the moment. So after sitting looking out into the park for awhile the kookaburra did a 180 degree hop and faced the other way.

At this point the kookaburra was now facing the closest picinic table to the sign so 2 metre’s away. My sister who having seen kookaburras before is saying repeately, ‘he getting ready to fly!’. Well of course he had to fly just as I put my video camera away. But worse I missed taping the most priceless moment of our holiday.

It appears that the Kookaburra wasn’t just facing the closest picinic table but apparently he was eyeing it up and waiting for his opportunity to fly from his perch to smack in the middle of the picinic table which had a happy family eating there bbq food.

He made such a well thought out landing to be facing a girl who had half a plate full of food to still consume. There he landed and it must have taken the girl probably about 5 seconds to realise there was a great big bird sitting right in front of her eyeing up her food. Once she did realise she jumped back in surprise leaving her plate open for easy pickings for a rather cunning Kookabura. Plate now being un-attended by hands it swooped and grabbed the unfinished steak off the plate and flew……over to the handrailing of the shelter behind the table where a grandmother who was so proudly carrying her grandchild in her arms decided to make a rather noisey retreat away from the bird and to the safety of open land.

Yep this Kookaburra was being unchallenged by everyone and decided to safely fly up into a tree and then proceeded to smack it around the branches to tenderise it. Obviously this meat wasn’t the top of range steak but he managed to get it to his liking before he munched down on the meat, throwing it down its throat.

Having already put the video camera away I could only capture the last sighting of the meat as it was consumed and had missed all the action that would have won us the top prize on “america’s funniest video’s” DOH!

And so having already fallen in love with the song we just loved it more for its pure trickery and gall, forever giving the aussie Kookaburra a place in the heart of a kiwi and a pom!