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close up kookaburra (56)
carper Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Star Workshop Editor/Gold Note Writer [C: 2009 W: 122 N: 2581] (8424)
The Blue-winged Kookaburra, Dacelo leachi, 42cm, gives more of a bark, cough or maniacal cackle than a laugh. It is less wide-spread, being confined to the coastal 100 k of the Northern half of Australia, whereas the Laughing Kooka is spread throughout the Eastern states & has been introduced into Tasmania & West Australia.

It can be hard to tell from the Laughing Kooka, which in Queensland has a stronger blue in its wings than in the South, but the true Blue-winged also has a blue rump, a white eye [instead of brown] & a finely streaked head & ear. The male has a blue tail.

A Kookaburra family defends a territory of 1 to 4 acres. It may be in open eucalypt forest, on a busy farm or in a garden suburb. In this state the breeding couple come back to NSW about August & start nest hunting, inspecting tree trunk cavities or vigorously stabbing termite nests with their strong bills to make a new hole. However they usually eventually select the old hole from the previous season, & have been known to use the same nest for 15 years.
Kookaburras mate for life.

Often several females are seen in the family group, but these are the daughters from previous seasons. Young males are chased off at the end of their 1st season.
Breeding here usually occurs in September or October [earlier in Queensland]. The mother lays 3 or 4 almost round white eggs & incubates them 50% of the time, while her husband, & daughters from the previous 2-4 years, do 30% of the incubating, which lasts about 25 days. For 20% of the time the eggs are unattended, & may be taken by gliders, possums or occasionally goannas. The chicks are born blind & naked , & for a couple of months the whole family helps feed them. One female has been seen to make 40 feeding trips to the nest in a single day.

The nest stinks with scraps of old meat, but the nestlings have a strong muscular cloaca at their rear end, & are soon able to squirt their liquid waste out the mouth of the nest for a distance or 1 or 2 feet! After they leave the nest at about 35 days, family members continue to feed them for another 6 weeks although they are adult sized. They teach them to bash their catch to death on a branch or rock while holding it in their bill, & they give them laughing lessons which take the juveniles a couple more weeks to master.

This part I have from this very interresting side. http://member.rivernet.com.au/balehirs/Bishyp6Birds.htm

very nice part. This photo is taken yesterday in Rotterdam Zoo. Some technical things. This shot was taken through wire netting fom lets say 1 1/2 cm round. So you must have some luck to get a good photo. But let me tell you this, that when you want you get the good photo. The distance was about 20 cm, I was happy I had that luck. I hope you like the result too.
Altered Image #1

carper Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Star Workshop Editor/Gold Note Writer [C: 2009 W: 122 N: 2581] (8424)
Noise removal
Edited by:vesalius Silver Star Critiquer/Silver Note Writer [C: 10 W: 2 N: 17] (46)
Hi Jaap, all I did was run the photo through some noise removal software (NeatImage in this case but Noise Ninja works well). For myself, I run into a bit of noise when I'm shooting at higher ISO (it's the digital equivalent of grain). Anyways, if you look around the Kookaburra, particularly in the dark sections, it should be a little more uniform.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks, Don.