Kookaburras and Clacking Evidence

"Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree, merry merry king of the bush is he."

What do you know, after bemoaning the fact that the kookaburras rarely grace our neighbourhood with their presence, both here on this blog a couple of days ago, and last night on the phone to "me mam", I heard a kookaburra this morning. Such a lovely sound, unfortunately drowned out a little by the surrounding clack-clacks. I only heard him call once and then again but further away so clearly the clack-clacks were too noisy for him too.

I have revisited my presumption that clack-clack is female. I'm so confused by all the different types of birds around our way and the different calls they have at different times of the day and for varying reasons, that there is no way I can tell for certain that the little bird I saw with her chick was Mrs Clack.

I also think I may have translated incorrectly, I think what is in fact being said is "this is my tree so stay out of it. And by the way, I was awake first this morning!" which leads me to the conclusion that it is a territorial call and therefore more likely to be coming from a male bird.

After sleeping late two mornings in a row (I was awake before Mr Clack, as were a number of other clack-clacks over the past couple of days), my bird was the first awake again this morning. Bless! Yesterday I recorded him so that I could share his beautiful singing with you all.

Play or download an audio recording in MP3 format.
Or, you can listen to (or download) a smaller .wma format.
Or, go ahead and view or download the movie so you can get the full effect, see just how dark and early it is and experience my blurry tired eyes. The movie takes a little while to load so please be patient.

If ANYONE can identify the bird by its call I'd really love to know what it is so please leave a comment.