i live in Sydney, Aus and two of these unknown birds have been in our tree, they make a begging kind of sound as though they are calling for their mother, and yesterday a magpie came and fed them. These birds are bigger than the magpie (around 45-50 cm) and look nothing alike. I would like to know what kind of bird this is, and why is a magpie feeding it?
thank you
xx Lara
I don't know anything about Australian birds - but here we have Cowbirds, and other places have Cuckoos, that lay their eggs in other birds nests. The other bird unwittingly raises foster chicks. The bird laying the egg will either toss out the eggs already in the nest, or the big foster chick will crowd the natural chicks out of the nest. I would guess this is a similar-type bird. Here our Magpies are smart - I thought too smart for this trick - but maybe a big fat foster baby is better than no baby at all?
Looks like a Channel-billed Cuckoo (Scythrops novaehollandiae). Note that Australian magpies (Genus Gymnorhina) are not related to North American magpies, which are corvids (i.e. crow family).
Oh, and I should add... Channel-billed Cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, who then raise the young. The Australian magpie is one of the common hosts.)
Ditto to Channel-billed Cuckoo
Resin
✓
I'd never heard of the Channel-billed Cuckoo so I had to google and read about it. It sure is an interesting looking bird and, the largest Cuckoo and the largest brood parasite in the world according to wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel-billed_Cuckoo
http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Channel-billed+Cuckoo&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=I28fTer6AcKblgf95tTbDA&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=2&ved=0CDIQsAQwAQ&biw=1280&bih=701
thank you so much! i thought of a cuckoo but i didnt know they lived in aus!!
i thought its beent he weirdest thing! hahah
thanks again xx
