Koel Calling

A few people contacted me this week about a strange bird-call ringing constantly from various places in Yea.

The call is an Eastern Koel Eudynamis orientalis– a type of large cuckoo. The male is black, the female is mottled brown. During the breeding season the male calls loudly and incessantly, day and night, so to hear this bird call while it visited Yea was not difficult. In Queensland they are sometimes called the Brainfever Bird because they don’t let up and people can’t sleep.

And visit Yea it did. They spend Winter in New Guinea or Indonesia where they are mostly silent and migrate to Australia for breeding, usually confining their visit to Queensland and northern NSW. Lately, individuals have been turning up in Victoria at various places – Benalla, Mallacoota, Melbourne Botanical Gardens. A few years ago I saw one at Melbourne Cemetery. This is the first time one has been recorded in Yea. It doesn’t seem to have stayed very long.

Koels are a large cuckoo and look to lay their egg in open nests of birds such as magpie larks and wattlebirds. I think this one caused no harm because no female was with it. It was just a lonely male crying out to the Universe in the hope of getting a response.