More! Give Me More!!

This is the Channel Billed Cuckoo mentioned in Cymbeline's blip yesterday.
We've both become a bit obsessed with it, and as she mentioned, when I googled strange large bird Blue Mountains it came straight up.
Gotta love google.

It is the largest parasitic bird in the world and for the last two weeks has been making an almighty ruckus demanding to be fed by this poor currawong.
I daresay it has its fans, but it's not endeared itself to me.
The poor currawong is totally confused and unable to satisfy his hunger.
Fortunately it only spends summer here to mate, then returns to Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.

I took a series of pics and had trouble choosing.
It was an excellent opportunity to use my new lens and this is handheld at 300mm.

Its wingspan measures up to 1 metre. The cuckoo is devious in the way it uses other bird species to rear its chicks – by working in pairs the male cuckoo provokes host-birds into chasing it while the female cuckoo slips into the host-nest to lay its eggs. For several months the east coast region is filled with pterodactyl-like calls as the cuckoos apply this breeding strategy. Once the chick hatches it is unwittingly fed by the host-bird until it is strong enough to fly north to Papua New Guinea.


If you're interested you can read more about this monster bird here.