A Blue-winged
Kookaburra has turned up at Yandina Creek on the Sunshine Coast. I
was alerted to the bird yesterday by Jonathan Westacott, who told me
that his wife Marguerite saw what she thought was a Blue-winged
Kookaburra as she drove along the Yandina-Coolum Road on Saturday
afternoon. I found the bird
late yesterday but had only poor, distant views as it caught and
swallowed a small rat. I managed a single image before crows chased
it off. That photograph (below) is classically indeterminate.
The
bird has a Laughing-like head shape with evidently a Laughing-like
dark eye, and no sign of a Blue-winged's blue rump. But it has what
looked like a large Blue-winged type bill, and the blue colouration
on the wing was Blue-winged like; there was also no sign of the
Laughing's facial stripe. I put the image up on BirdLife North
Queensland last night and opinion was divided, but the possibility of
a hybrid was discussed.
I returned to the
area this morning and had good views of what clearly was an adult male Blue-winged Kookaburra. Which just goes to illustrate the
vagaries of photographs. It was in the same spot as yesterday, and
presumably where Marguerite saw it on Saturday: along the
Yandina-Coolum Road, about 400m east of the River Road turnoff. It
perches on the wires on the southern side of the road in that area.
It's quite jittery so if people want to observe or photograph the
bird, it's much better to park opposite the wires on the northern
side of the road (ie, on the left heading from Yandina towards
Coolum). The site adjoins paddocks used to graze cattle and sugar cane plantations. It's close to the recently completed solar farm and Yandina Creek Wetland, and just a few hundred metres from where a Common Bronzewing unexpectedly
turned up last year for a few weeks.
Blue-winged
Kookaburra is a very rare bird in south-east Queensland, found
sparingly in pockets of tall eucalypt woodland in the Brisbane and
Lockyer valleys. There are a handful of ebird reports from the
Sunshine Coast region but to my knowledge, this is the first record
to be confirmed by a photograph or subsequent observations. Ebird.
Hi Greg, none of your photos have been working in the blog these past few days, is anyone else reporting the same problem? thanks Moyra
ReplyDeleteNobody else has reported this Moyra. I think it must have something to do with your PC/device.
Delete