Given the chaotic state of the world, it should not have surprised me to hear and see this… but it did.
A weird and unchanging sort of scream made me look out to see a kookaburra holding down another kookaburra, seemingly with its beak. I couldn’t tell if there were two or three birds involved.
It was undoubtedly aggressive, I thought; but then I remembered that in a lot of animal mating behaviour looks more aggressive than loving.
This went on for about five minutes, but when the top bird released its grip, they both flew off, leaving me baffled.
Can anyone shed light on such an event?
I don’t know where these local Sacred Ibis nest, but this one seemed to be bearing a stick for the building of such a nest as it flew between the trees. It landed on one of the bird baths, which are all way too small for it. But how would it drink with a stick in its beak?
The bird seemed to consider this problem for a time, then it let the stick drop, bent its long neck and laid its too-long beak sideways in the water. Is that how it usually drank?!
I felt guilty that I hadn’t provided a big enough bird bath…
The other puzzle has been this little brown bird that often scuttles across my ‘backyard’, hiding in lantana-bush nearby, then dashing across the grass.
I am told it is a Buff Banded Rail, and sometimes I see two of them.
I am delighted to know what my shy scurrier is at last.