koel

[amalan11]

im realy curious i live in inner sydney and iv seen a pair of common koels before the patterned girl and blackish boy.
Today I heard a noise up in the gum tree and saw 2 huge birds about 45 cm id say,both koels I thought due to size and beak but a real goose gray all over but with the striped pattern under the tail,they had an almost grating metalic call but koel family im sure...and I notice the minor birds were not keen on them
any idea what they were iv looked at koels on google and cannot find them.very striking birds

[Danny]

Channel billed cuckoos make a similar call and fit your description

[David2406]

Those channel billed cuckoos sound like they are from Jurassic Park

[amalan11]

your very good,thats definetly what they were,I was amazed by the beak I remember thinking it looked like an albatros or something it was so striking.That and the huge size Im surprised to see they are common iv never seen anything like them !!.They were very interested in my gum tree and the hens so perhaps I will see them again .
thanks danny

[Buzzard-1]

Common name around here are Storm birds as they ride in on the storm fronts!!

[Diane]

Those channel billed cuckoos sound like they are from Jurassic Park

After googling images, they look like they are from Jurassic Park!
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=Chann ... 00&bih=683" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[mickw]

Im surprised to see they are common iv never seen anything like them !!.

The two are migratory and parasitic.......here for breeding.......the CBC's drop an egg in a crow/magpie/currawong nest........the Koel bludges off a Peewee or Noisy friar bird......and others......they're not that discriminant......... the Miners know they're up to no good

[amalan11]

yes the sky is very grey here so storm bird would make sense.They were back today im wondering if they are thinking of laying in the chooks nest? there are a lot of magpies around so thats a chance....at least according to google they dont kick out the host birds eggs just add to the size of the family

[maz]

After playing around going from link to link I actually came across this...birds australia are doing a survey on them so maybe you would like to contribute http://birdsinbackyards.net/surveys/channel-bill.cfm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[arthur]

according to google they dont kick out the host birds eggs just add to the size of the family

Well 'Google' is wrong . .

When I was a kid and roamed the bush at every spare moment, I came across a crows nest that had 6 CBC's eggs, and no crow's eggs . . . and you can't mistake one for the other . . so 'some thing' had tossed out the crow's eggs

This also caused me to think that the CBC could distinguish between crows' eggs and eggs of their own kind

That was a very rare discovery, as parasitised nests usually contained only one CBC egg . . most contained none . . making it difficult to know if a host egg had been removed.

Most CBC host species have reasonably large clutches . . 4-6 eggs