Kookaburras, I must admit, are a favourite local bird, locally. One we named Blue, had part of her lower beak missing, and subsequently easy to recognise, came most days, to fill up on choice offcuts of meat..aka mince. At times, four or five of them presented, but only three were game enough to sit on the fence, let us approach, and get fed by hand. Blue had two or three at the most, bits, and headed off. Every now and then, she’d feed one of the mob up a closeish tree, and come back to fill up again. One occasion, we had Brown Stokes land on an adjacent gate post, and Blue got herself into all sorts of bother, trying to land on his gatepost, and feed him at the same time. So, he was a kid of hers. Grey Stokes was his Dad, but hasn’t been seen for ages, and Brown Stokes “talks” to us. The only kooka to do so.

Blue

Now, enter a local Drongo. Smallish, crow like, with a forked tail. And has a god-awful persistent piercing on and off whistle when it wants feeding, similar to a youngish brown-feathered magpie, singing away to a parent, that has just unearthed a juicy Morsel. Probably why it’s earned the name of drongo, eh. So, in the early days, it’d swoop and grab a flung hunk of mince in its claws, quite striking to see. But..it has lost its appeal, by catching the mince in its beak like the rest of them.

Himself..note forked tail.

Naow, girls and boys, other meat-eating critters have taken notice of this abundance of generosity on our part, and decided that They would like to be included. So, now, we have a free for all. Butcher birds try and out manoeuvre all the others, by hurtling down at the instance of..throwing up of tempting bits of meat, resulting in, on occasion, quite spectacular collisions, near misses, and outright thievery, ever seen in Our Back Yard. We don’t encourage this , it being seen by us as encouraging bad behaviour..Up till six or so months ago, we had Dive Bombers..so labelled as such, on account of..you can guess. The blasted things are huge..and it’s not all that satisfying to have one of them doing a Swoop in Our General Direction..ducking for cover was the Order of the Day. They’ve stopped..thankfully!

So now, butcher birds are mostly content to perch closely, and wait for a ..thrown opportunity.

Butch

Crows are never game enough to approach too closely, but are certainly interested in the goings on. I have taken to leaving rotten mince for them..being a tad reluctant to expose said favoured kookaburras to…well, stinky slimy meat.

Crows,  courtesy of Wikipeadia.

We had a “crow” with white markings on its tail feathers come for a feed, and I’m quite happy for a few bits, here and there. Because it’s not a crow, is it. A fairly distinctive raucous buckaw buckaw, denotes it as a Black Jay..the first one seen last year tied itself in knots trying to find the other one that was calling out..I was chuffed that my mimic was so successful!

BlackJay/Currawong, courtesy Wikipeadia