Kookaburra sits in the Old Gum Tree

Every night at about half past nine,  just about bed-time, a cacophony rings across the forest. Maniacal laughter cackling, rising and falling mixed with the yelping and yapping of an army of hysterical dogs in the blackness of the night. Add a Wurlitzer organ and it could turn the  whole thing into an early Gothic horror movie.

It is the Kookaburras, of course. There are two hordes of Blue-winged Kookaburras on the block (as in the picture) They perform the barking serenade, and one horde of laughing Kookaburra, all yelling as loudly as they can at each other about their boundaries. In half an hour or so they settle down and leave the air waves to the melancholy crying of the stone curlews.

In the day time the blue-winged ones watch me working with beady eyes, in hopes of a feast of insects fleeing the disturbed ground. But there is little to forage on in the dry top soil.