Sitting on the old gum tree
December 8, 2011 2:37 AM   Subscribe

Laughing Kookaburra birds: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
posted by twoleftfeet (16 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
When I die and go to hell, this is the animal that will be perched outside my bedroom window every morning at 4 AM for all eternity.
posted by biddeford at 2:47 AM on December 8, 2011


this is the animal that will be perched outside my bedroom window every morning at 4 AM for all eternity.

Quoth the Kookaburra, ha ha he ha he he ha ha hee ho ha ha hee he he ha. Rolling on the floor.
posted by twoleftfeet at 2:52 AM on December 8, 2011


Whenever I'm camping they *always* wake me up at 4am. No other birds call for at least another hour... why Kookaburra, why?
posted by estuardo at 2:52 AM on December 8, 2011


why Kookaburra, why?

At least they are laughing with you, not at you.

No, wait, they are definitely laughing at you.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:58 AM on December 8, 2011


Magpie warble (& with shed).

Nothomesicknothomesicknothomesick
posted by bright cold day at 3:10 AM on December 8, 2011 [2 favorites]


My wife and I were in Australia, and she was giving a talk about her scientific work to some colleagues. About halfway through the talk, a Kookaburra perched itself right outside the window, which was next to where the podium was and laughed...and laughed...and if you've heard a Kookaburra in person, you know they're loud. This went on for 20 minutes.

It was very distracting. Interesting thing was, my wife didn't even realize it happened until I mentioned it afterwards.
posted by Philosopher Dirtbike at 3:42 AM on December 8, 2011


On day years ago my mate and myself were assembling a gearbox of a landrover out in the middle of the bush at a mates house. His house had a swingset we could use as a hoist and an good work area. We had to drive for ages to get there, and one day at around lunchtime I was getting hungrier and hungrier - and started hassling my mate that we should go "into town" and get some food. He was in the middle of something tricky that he wanted to finish, and I was getting increasingly hungry and more disruptive. Finally he down tools and said "right, fuck it, lets go". So we drove all the way into town, bought a big pizza and drove all the way back, not touching a slice. We settled down near the BBQ area and opened the box. No sooner had we and savoured the aroma, when a fucking big kookaburra flew down, landed in the middle of the pizza, ripped up a huge chunk, did a crap, and flew off. We were not hungry enough to eat bird crap takeaway.
posted by the noob at 3:43 AM on December 8, 2011 [7 favorites]


How to burst into tears in one easy step: being at the ANZAC dawn service in our little country town, and during the minute of silence, a kookaburra laughs.

Then you realise that the fallen died far far away, and never got to hear those noisy little buggers again. One of those moments that kinda puts it all into perspective.

But cockatoos are worse. Damn, I hate their screeching. And I'm not thrilled with their habit of chewing off bits of trees either. They're like the noisy teenage vandals of the bird world.
posted by malibustacey9999 at 3:57 AM on December 8, 2011 [1 favorite]


It turns out they all share an ancestral memory of this performance.
posted by biddeford at 3:59 AM on December 8, 2011


Happy their lives must be!
posted by argonauta at 5:54 AM on December 8, 2011 [1 favorite]


A bit sad how many of these are caged - not like they are rare in the wild or anything...

[and malibustacey9999 if you are talking about black cockatoos, particularly red-tails, then you can pretty much go directly to hell - best damn birds around, sitting up there stripping a Marri with open scorn for us ground-bound apes. They live as long as us, have social structures of similar complexity to pre-agrarian humans, and are quite happy to chuck a nut right back at you if you threaten them - what more can you ask?]
posted by overyield at 6:15 AM on December 8, 2011


First time this Yank has ever heard the kookabura -- or so I thought. Because doesn't that noise get looped into all sorts of movies as "generic jungle background noise"?

I sort of think there's a TV Tropes page about this but I will not link to spare you all.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:47 AM on December 8, 2011


Yeah I was looking for that kookaburra jungle sound effect earlier and couldn't find it. I imagine it's sort of a Wilhelm-Scream type joke among sound people at this point.
posted by gubo at 7:22 AM on December 8, 2011


I love those little fuckers.
posted by rmmcclay at 7:29 AM on December 8, 2011


I've known the song since I was a little kid, but until I traveled to Australia for the first time I never knew that they were kingfishers! Kingfishers might be my all-time favorite birds. They are awesome.
posted by zomg at 7:37 AM on December 8, 2011


I especially liked how the birds in #7 got all quiet afterward, like they hadn't just made the world's most gigantic ruckus.
posted by vytae at 7:48 PM on December 8, 2011


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