The Bird Song that drives one nuts

[Redneck]

We currently have these Koels calling all day from 4:30am ..

They are a type of Cuckoo male is black female is speckled

[youtube]http://youtu.be/plli75O5Qc0[/youtube]

They lay their eggs in other birds nests

https://www.graemechapman.com.au/librar ... .php?c=310

[Redneck]

In the 8 January 2010 edition of the Canberra Times, journalist Susannah Metherell has written a somewhat humourous article about a noisy koel that is keeping residents of Dooring Street awake at night.

The article is reproduced below:

Call of the koel driving Dickson residents cuckoo

The reason is the male koel, a member of the cuckoo family, which has a distinctive, repetitive mating call, that rings throughout the neighbourhood all night.

Scott Mcarthur, who lives in the street, is suffering sleepless nights at the call of the koel ”At 4.30 in the morning, everybody wakes up. I’ve heard people yelling at night … screaming out the windows ‘shut-up!’ at like 2 o’clock in the morning when it’s going off,” he said.

”It’s crazy … the whole neighbourhood, like anyone you ask in the street, just goes, ‘Oh man what is wrong with that bird’?

”Everyone seems to hate them … people almost have car accidents because everyone slows down to have a look and try and see if they can see it up in the tree on the corner.”

Australia Museum naturalist Martyn Robinson said the residents of Dickson were not alone, as the koel was found across Canberra and Australia, although they were primarily from South-East Asia.

”They’re migratory, so they come down during the spring and look for hosts,” he said.

Mr Robinson said koels were known overseas and in some parts of Australia as ”rain birds” because their calls would become more frantic and frequent before rainstorms.

”Particularly up north in the tropics they’re known as the ‘herald of the monsoon’,” he said.

”The calling at night is unusual but it’s very effective during the daytime … it is possible that the females won’t be able to find the males in the cacophony of other sounds that are going on. But at night when it’s relatively quiet … any females that are …within literally a ‘cooee’ of them are going to hear that call.

”They breed September to March, so March or probably a bit before March you’ll find that the calling will stop.”

Mr Mcarthur agreed, calling it the ‘bird of summer’ because of its arrival in summer, ”start of December … and then until the end of February, March it is four months of insomnia.”

Solutions included ear plugs, but Mr Mcarthur said that even with ”double glazed windows in our house … you can still hear it. It’s a penetrating beast, that one.”

Visit the Birds in Backyards website for more information on the Common Koel (Eudynamys scolopacea)

https://www.northcanberra.org.au/canber ... ts-cuckoo/

[Redneck]

28 November, 2014 2:39PM AEDT
Dear Wollongong's most annoying bird, we can't live in harmony
By Justin Huntsdale

I love birds, but there's one particular breed that has a call that will bury itself into your brain from 4:30am to night time, and it's drastically out of place in Wollongong suburbia - the common koel.

Let me introduce you to a bird that has haunted me since I moved to Wollongong three years ago, echoing across the hills of North Wollongong, and now reverberating around the CBD during the warmer months.

I love hearing the kookaburra's laugh, a magpie's warble or a budgie's chirp, but few things are more painful to listen to than the repetitive, building, ear piercingly loud cry from the common koel.

It starts as a simple two-note call, which you could probably live with every now and then.

But then it repeats, and repeats, then rises in pitch, then rises again, then rises to the point where you think the bird is going to explode out of pure yelling desperation.

It's like each new call comes with an extra exclamation mark, and then it stops, for about 40 seconds before resuming its next sequence of sound pollution.

One of the few things I know about birds is that they use their call as a mating exercise to attract a partner.

A call uses up a lot of a bird's energy, so for a female bird looking for a partner, they will hear a male bird calling itself ragged and think it must be a suitably strong male with a rich source of food - perfect for raising young.

I can only assume that the common koels of Wollongong have access to an all-you-can-eat worm buffet that's open 24 hours a day, because they have the endurance of Steve Moneghetti.

This morning it started at 4:30am - that's a solid one hour even before sun rise.

Bad courting behaviour

It's not a case of the early bird getting the worm - this early bird wouldn't be able to see past its beak because it's so dark.

Nor would any female koel in their right mind be awake at such a ridiculous hour looking for romance.

So what you're left with is a lone koel, broadcasting its interminable call that's audible anywhere from Coniston to North Wollongong while I lay awake in bed looking at the ceiling, with the window shut.

A word of advice when it comes to courting, koels - take a leaf out of the showy peacock's school of womanising.

Pipe down and let your looks do the talking.

Females are looking for more than someone with a relentlessly loud voice.

I was even hearing that sordid 'woo-ah' noise it in my mind this morning when it wasn't calling.

Face to face with the enemy

I spotted one of the birds this week out the back of our ABC Illawarra offices, which is where I recorded the audio attached to this article.

Poor Nick McLaren, our journalist in charge, was trying to edit some audio with the door shut and headphones on and it was still coming through loud and clear.

As usual, the koel was showing no signs of weakness having just enjoyed a generous serve of grubs and other delicacies for lunch, fuelled up and ready to sound the siren until late evening.

This was the first time I was able to lay eyes on the species that has caused me so much frustration.

I walked out to our balcony and there it sat in the tree - jet black with red eyes, looking every bit as unappealing as its voice, positively jolting back and forth with the exertion of each piercing cry.

And then silence.

I looked at him, he looked at me with his red eyes, and I realised that I am a land-bound, quiet person up against a very mobile, loud bird.

You win, koel.

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/201 ... 138300.htm

[Black Orchid]

There used to be a parasitic Cuckoo near me. I haven't heard it for a couple of years now though. I'm not familiar with the Koel.

Aussie bird calls ...

http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/birds/f ... Bird-Songs

[Redneck]

There used to be a parasitic Cuckoo near me. I haven't heard it for a couple of years now though. I'm not familiar with the Koel.

Aussie bird calls ...

http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/birds/f ... Bird-Songs

I had never heard of the name myself.

It took me a lot of Googling to locate what it was as I could only hear him somewhere nearby, going on and on and on and on.

[brian ross]

Back in the 1980s, the Currowong was the bird that used to blight Canberrans' lives.

[Redneck]

Back in the 1980s, the Currowong was the bird that used to blight Canberrans' lives.

Plenty of them still around Brian !

[brian ross]

Back in the 1980s, the Currowong was the bird that used to blight Canberrans' lives.

Plenty of them still around Brian !

Not quite the plague numbers that once inhabited the capital. Once the CSIRO worked out that it was the food that brought them, they started eliminating that source and the numbers reduced to manageable proportions.

[Neferti]

There used to be a parasitic Cuckoo near me. I haven't heard it for a couple of years now though. I'm not familiar with the Koel.

Aussie bird calls ...

http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/birds/f ... Bird-Songs

I had never heard of the name myself.

It took me a lot of Googling to locate what it was as I could only hear him somewhere nearby, going on and on and on and on.

I've heard it too, but it is a fair way off from where I am, still an annoying, monotonous sound, no wonder people are yelling at it.

[Redneck]

There used to be a parasitic Cuckoo near me. I haven't heard it for a couple of years now though. I'm not familiar with the Koel.

Aussie bird calls ...

http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/birds/f ... Bird-Songs

I had never heard of the name myself.

It took me a lot of Googling to locate what it was as I could only hear him somewhere nearby, going on and on and on and on.

I've heard it too, but it is a fair way off from where I am, still an annoying, monotonous sound, no wonder people are yelling at it.

I wondered if you had heard them Nef as I thought you lived somewhere near my vicinity!

Actually my Burmese cat went mental around my PC when I put the Youtube of it on she was trying to find the bird!