McKoel

If you lean closer, I'll whisper where this koel (either Eudynamys cyanocephala or E orientalis; click thumbnail to enlarge in new window) is nesting, not in Sandy but in Coffs.

Shhhh!! You know the McDonald's at Park Beach Plaza? She's in a lilli pilli tree (Acmena smithii) near the drive-thru.

She would have come down in about McSeptember from Papua-New Guinea, or maybe Timor or the Maluku Islands (aka Moluccas, Indonesia), and will head back there in early Autumn (McMarch). Being a cuckoo (Cuculidae), she lays her eggs in the nests of other birds (such as larger Honeyeaters like Friar-birds), but at Macca's she has a nest. Whether she built it or just moved in, I can't say.

Nor do I know if her husband is anywhere around Coffs. He will be black, not the tawny colour of the female with her beautiful long kookaburra-like, chevron-marked tail feathers.

She's not nesting there for the McFood, she's there for slow food like the lilli pilli berries, and she will also eat other berries, natives like the lilli pilli, or exotics, like mulberry, and figs and insects. McDonald's has diversified, but not that much.

This koel is not tame but you can get up quite close; if you're from the McCoffs area and thinking of seeing her, please don't get too close.