Hello, newcomer here, and hope someone can help me identify what this bird is.
For quite a while now (probably a few months) I've been hearing what I thought was a small dog - like a Maltese - barking constantly in my neighbourhood. As though it had been put out in the yard and just kept barking and barking to be let inside. The sound has always seemed quite a distance away, but yesterday morning (around this time - 7am) suddenly I began hearing it from clearly very much closer.
Began investigating - still thinking it was a dog and that perhaps it had escaped its yard - and was quite surprised to find it was coming from a bird! It was sitting in a Jacaranda tree in my neighbours yard. I was able to see it quite clearly, although I was about 10 metres or so away and had to get into the branches of a tree in my own yard to see it clearly enough.
It wasn't what I would call a small bird. Probably about 35-40 cms in length, and quite plump. From photos I've been looking at this morning, it looked very similar to a Spiny-cheeked Honeyeater, but the call was nothing like what I hear here. The call was just this constant "bark bark bark bark", almost rhythmical. I watched it for 2 or 3 minutes, just "bark bark bark bark", and I actually thought to myself that it must have been calling for a mate, when suddenly another one flew in - much smaller, not as a long, and much much slimmer - and appeared to FEED it! This happened 2 or three times. This other smaller bird was feeding the much larger bird, like a mother bird feeds the babies.
This morning I can hear it again in the distance - sounds like it could be in the bushland that is about 500 metres away.
Anyone tell me what this bird is?
Thanks,
Sharon
Did you look at the Koel?
Look at the juvenile not the male.
If the bird being fed is bigger than the bird feeding it you most likely are watching a cuckoo being fed.
Aha, ok, the "feeder" looked very similar to the second pic on that link to the Eastern Koel, and I hear that bird call a lot around here. But the one being fed was I'd guess about at least half as big again as the feeder bird, and that's the one that had the "bark bark bark" type call.
The Channel-billed Cuckoo call sounds very similar, although in that recording it is much higher pitched and also faster. But I'd say yes, it must have been some type of cuckoo.
Thanks.
Just a tip, sharon. It's always a good idea to give the location of the bird you're talking about since very few bird species are seen Australia all over.