I was less than a week on Australian soil, when I found myself staring up at a…kookaburra. A quintessential Australian bird, if there ever was one! I could hardly believe my eyes, there it was just sitting there looking at me at the same forest near Coolamon where I first saw the willie wagtail, and had a mythical encounter with a swamp wallaby – the Kindra State Forest. Here is the picture I got of that bird:
Since then kookaburras have been everywhere, but I never seem to know where to look for them. They just show up. This one (below) we saw near the koala preserve at Narrandera – where we saw koalas too.
The laughing bit seems to happen mostly in the evening. One warm summer night as we drove to the end of a road somewhere in the middle of nowhere, we heard a small chorus of laughing kookaburras, as recorded in the video below. Note the video is for sound only – no kookaburras appear – but you can sure hear them!
The kookaburra was made famous by this laughing, as immortalized in a children’s poem written by Marion Sinclair in 1932 for a contest being put on by the Victorian Girl Guides. The poem won the contest and was sung at the World Jamboree in Frankston, Victoria in 1934. Now it is well known around the world. In case you don’t know the lyrics, I’ve put them down for ya!
******
Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree,
Merry merry king of the bush is he.
Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh, Kookaburra,
Gay your life must be!
Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree,
Eating all the gum drops he can see.
Stop Kookaburra, stop Kookaburra
Save some there for me!
Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree,
Counting all the monkeys he can see.
Laugh Kookaburra, laugh Kookaburra
That’s not a monkey, that’s me!
******
Of course, there are no monkeys in Australia. However, the gum tree (= eucalyptus) is the most common tree around, and there are many different types of gum trees and I suppose kookaburras sit in all of them at one time or another. However, the one I see nearly every day driving to Charles Sturt University is usually on a wire when I spot him.
And check out the perch this kookaburra has chosen…trying to balance out the universe, perhaps?
