EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

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Iconic Sound of the Jungle Movies

Credit & Copyright:  Dr. Bruce G. Marcot
  

Explanation:  Virtually every jungle movie starting in the 1930s includes the call of this bird.  It is an iconic sound that instantly conjures a sense of deep dark vegetation in steaming tropical heat.  This is the Laughing Kookaburra. Have a listen ... (I recorded this in Chambers Wildlife Rainforest Lodge in tropical North Queensland, Australia). The problem ... is that this species occurs only in Australia, and not the tropical jungles of the Amazon of South America nor the jungles of the Congo in central Africa!    Laughing Kookaburras are actually kingfishers -- one of the world's largest, in fact.  Compare this to a diminutive kingfisher of Kenya, Africa, that we explored in an earlier EPOW episode.   Laughing Kookaburras "laugh" as a territorial call, and often in large groups.  Check out this recording I made of a group during early dawn, in the aptly-named Kingfisher Park of northern Queensland, Australia.          To the left here, and In the main photo above, is a juvenile female Laughing Kookaburra of race minor, an endemic race found only in Queensland, northeast Australia.   Race minor is appropriately named for its being smaller than the other race of the species, shown further below.          This is identified as a female because the base of the tail is brown, not blue; and a juvenile because the bill is all dark.       Here is another female -- this one likely an adult because the lower mandible of the bill is light, not dark. This is an individual of the larger race novaeguineae which is found more widespread in eastern and southwest Australia. I photographed this bird in an old-growth forest of mountain ash outside Melbourne, Victoria, in southeast Australia.      Laughing Kookaburras usually nest in hollows in trees or termite mounds, and inhabit open woodlands, typically along streams, rivers, swamps, and billabongs.   They are typical of the Bassian avifauna group of Australia, characterized by birds inhabiting the temperate Australian  forests of Eucalyptus. Laughing Kookaburras are also one of a set of wildlife species whose populations are split by the Torresian Barrier which separates northern, rainforest-dwelling races (race minor, in the main photo above) from southern, temperate eucalypt woodland-dwelling races (race  novaeguineae, shown immediately above).    And for this species, this is no laughing matter ...