What the hell kinda bird is this I just saw sitting on my back fence? Well, Charlie (the cat) saw it first and she was having a complete spaz all over the kitchen about it, so I knew it must be pretty special and I came and checked it out.
Despite living where we do, we actually have an amazing array of bird-life - plenty of pigeons and sparrows and thrush and blackbirds of course - but even better, tui and bellbirds, with their distinctive calls, fantails, waxeyes, and incredibly, at least two keruru (morepork) complaining every night in the bush across the road. I could swear I heard one of those fat-ass native wood-pigeons one day, too.
But I've never seen one of these before.
Despite living where we do, we actually have an amazing array of bird-life - plenty of pigeons and sparrows and thrush and blackbirds of course - but even better, tui and bellbirds, with their distinctive calls, fantails, waxeyes, and incredibly, at least two keruru (morepork) complaining every night in the bush across the road. I could swear I heard one of those fat-ass native wood-pigeons one day, too.
But I've never seen one of these before.
6 comments:
It's a kingfisher! How wonderful.
I remember seeing them when I was a kid, but VERY rarely. (Hawkes Bay.) And out in the countryside, not in town.
You can find information about them here, but the picture on the stamp looks more like your photo.
(Look at what they EAT, at that first link!)
Oh, and I meant to add - if you like your avian visitors maybe you should build a bird table (one the cat can't get at). We did that when I was a kid and for one memorable season (summer, I think) we had a regular wood pigeon visitor. It was a terrible flier. It always crash landed on the table, which was hanging from a tree, and made it swing wildly.
Funny birds, wood pigeons. I always thought they seemed like they were on their way to becoming flightless but then changed their minds.
Hey Steven - the last time I remember seeing one of these beauties was next to the Tawa railway station foot overbridge that was painted a very disturbingly powdery dry and sort of rusty pink, and which went from Duncan St toward the primary school. It must've been about 1986. The bird was perched on a willow overlooking that shitty little stream that ran down by the railway tracks all the way to the back of the school. I wondered then, as I do now what kind of fish could possibly have inhabited those waters..... Ick, weird. I'm finding my memories of Tawa coming back to me in a far crisper way than I think I feel comfortable about.
Nice bird though!
Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree / Merry, merry king of the bush is he / Laugh, kookaburra, laugh, kookaburra / Gay your life must be
Methinks she dost complain too loud about Tawa Stream. It was home to a number of impressively large water-rats, I'll have you know. They'd crawl up on to the soccer field to die. Which was when we found them.
That overbridge was (and still is) an abomination. I think the only thing that's been done to it in 20 years is the addition of little shelters over each side, to make it more difficult for people to suicide onto the high-voltage cables and/or the tracks below.
Geneveive (a more different one) points out that those "those fat-ass native wood-pigeons" are actually keruru, while morepork are simply ruru.
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