Laugh, kookabubba, laugh

Well, would you just look at this cute as a button, likely murderer!

We’ve known that kookabubbas, that’s baby laughing kookaburras to the uninitiated, were in our future a couple of months ago with some serious domestic situations happening.

Lots of tackling of other kookaburras out of the sky and so much laughter, the kind where it’s instantly clear that the laugh is territorial in nature.

Basically once spring is sprung, like many in the animal kingdom, the local kookaburras’ thoughts turn to love and all of the associated dramas. So it was only a matter of time (around 25 days for the eggs to hatch and another 35-40 days for the babies to start to leave the nest) before we started to hear the begging cry of newly fledged kookabubbas.

There’s usually three eggs laid but it’s a tough world out there and siblicide – murder by a sibling – is high in kookaburras. There’s only a 50 percent chance that the third chick will survive as the first two babies use the hook on the end of their beak, a hook that only the chicks have, to stab their nest mate to death.

Sometimes it’s not about the stabbing but the starving, with two of the babies hogging all the food until the third chick starves to death. Yikes. It’s a bit of a brutal start to life but raising the young ones is a bit of a family affair. Rather than getting kicked out and having to find their own territory as soon as they are able, the chicks from the previous season or two hang around helping to feed and protect the newest members of the family.

By the time you read this, our kookabubbas will have started to laugh themselves, which is a cute thought and a much nicer sound than the persistent, throaty ‘feed me’ call that we are currently hearing.

They breed from September to around January though, so if you keep your eyes on any hollows in local trees or see any stumpy tailed, blue/grey-eyed balls of adorableness, with a hint of murderous aggression, you may just have your very own kookabubbas.

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