Original Sold Prints avaliable 

Pastel on Supertooth Paper
 32 X 50  cm

Australia's laughing kookaburra is the world's heaviest kingfisher (though Africa's giant kingfisher is slightly larger). They are renowned for their incredible laughing call which rings through the bush wherever they are found. Some of the older settlers referred to them as the bush alarm clock for their habit of clamorous group calling at the first crack of dawn's light. I used to have a calling kooka as the ringtone on my mobile phone but found myself leaping for the phone at inconvenient moments only to realise it was the real thing outside in the garden and not my phone at all.
   They are famous for being friendly and quite happy to steal your picnic lunch when your back is turned.... but they also have a darker side as unfussy eaters and will swallow whole anything up to and including full grown black rats, small birds such as wrens and finches. Added to this is their nasty habitat of siblicide in the nest hollow. Mum will often stop feeding her babies until a weaker one dies and then resume feeding the strong.
   But all that to one side the kookaburra is certainly one of my favorite birds.
    The pastel painting shown here depicts one of the curious neighbors, who call our garden home.