The Bad Arsed Rainbow Lorikeets Of Mollymook

Earlier this month the Lovely Leslie and I broke our fast at The Beach Hut Cafe, down on Mollymook Beach. It's a lovely spot, especially out of tourist season and during the working week. The only company you are likely to stumble across are pensioners or stay-at-home mums and their little ones.

There we were enjoying our bacon and eggs when we interrupted by the squawking of some very cheeky Trichoglossus haematodus, aka the Rainbow Lorikeet. They made their presence known by settling on the head of a young child who promptly squealed with laughter and fear. After terrorising her for a bit they thought we were a bit more interesting, considering we were eating after all!

To cut a long and fairly boring story short, they performed their tame little tricks like sitting on your hand and so forth, then just to prove they had some spirit one decided he wanted to walk in our breakfast.

We managed a couple of pics and vids on the trusty iPhone before beating a retreat.

One thing that has troubled me for some time now ... is it okay for birds to eat egg? Is there a moral issue here?

Pretty pictures follow.

Ciao for now!

Pedro

The Crazy World Of The Channel-Billed Cuckoo

I learned something yesterday! As they say, a day without learning something new is a day wasted!

For 51 years I was under the assumption that cuckoos lived in Switzerland, most likely in the roof of a funny little Swiss mountain house and went "cuckoo! cuckoo!". I was not naive enough to think it would have been on the hour though.

Anyway, yesterday morning myself and the Lovely Leslie were awakened at some ungodly hour by an awful racket outside our bedroom window. It sounded like a bird was in some kind of danger or had been injured. A dreadful squawking going on and on.

Finally, in bad grace and muttering threats of what I would do if I had access to a firearm, I got up and had a look outside. After a while I could make out two large birds, accompanied by a couple of currawongs. Grabbing my binoculars I noticed that one of the large birds was begging for food and the currawong was actually feeding it (see photo above). This went on for a long time, the little squadron of birds going from tree to tree making the dreadful racket. The Lovely Leslie and I were stumped, we'd never seen anything like it!

Intrigued, we hit the laptops and eventually worked out that the large birds were, in fact, Channel-Billed Cuckoos. Would you believe we had the world's largest cuckoo living right here in Ulladulla and in our back yard!

What amazed us the most is the cruel yet clever way this bird has evolved. Mother Cuckoo lays an egg in the nest of its targeted host, usually magpies or currawongs. The poor old currawong or maggie hatches the egg, then spends the majority of its time trying to feed a chick that eventually grows to twice the size of it's "parent". Apparently the other chicks in the nest die because Mum is so busy trying to feed the noisy and much large cuckoo that they go unfed.

So that's what we were witnessing. Our little peek into this strange world is at the twilight of the relationship though. Judging by the size of the cuckoo it is now fully grown. I also read online that these birds migrate to Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, starting in February and March.

So, there you go!

One of the reasons we love being where we are is because we get to see these kinds of things. Our life in the suburbs of Canberra was never like this.