Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE ROLLER-LIKE BIRDS

THE ROLLERS AND THEIR ALLIES

THE KINGFISHERS

Laughing Kingfishers

Lack of space forbids extended mention of the equally brilliant species of Ceycopsis of the Celebes and Sangi islands, Ispidina of Africa and Madagascar, and Myioceyx of West Africa, all being tiny species under five inches in length and one {Myioceyx lecontii) being only three and three quarters inches long. In sharp contrast with these, both as regards size and plumage, is the huge, thick-billed Clytoceyx rex of the mountains of southeastern New Guinea, and the so-called Laughing Kingfishers (Dacelo) of Australia and New Guinea.

The best-known of these is the Laughing Jackass, or”Bushman's Clock”(D. gigas), a giant Kingfisher over seventeen inches in length, the plumage above being brown, becoming greenish blue on the lower back and on the median wing-coverts, while the white of the lower parts extends as a broad collar around the neck and forward above the eye; the tail is bright rufous barred with black and, with the exception of the central pair of feathers, tipped with white.

The female is similar to the male, but has more rufous on the crown and ear-coverts. This, says Mr. Gould,”is a bird with which every resident and traveler in New South Wales is more or less familiar, for, independently of its large size, its voice is so extraordinary as to be unlike that of any other bird.”

This voice, which has won for it the seemingly incongruous appellation, is variously described, some calling it a”gurgling, laughing note,”others a”gurgling laugh, commencing in a low and gradually rising to a high and loud tone,”while Captain Sturt says,”Its cry, which resembles a chorus of wild spirits, is apt to startle the traveler who may be in jeopardy, as if laughing and mocking at his misfortunes.”The”Old Bushman,”whose delightful”Bush Wanderings of a Naturalist”has been read by so many, says: “About an hour before sunrise the bush-man is awakened by the most discordant sounds, as if a troop of fiends were shouting, whooping, and laughing around him in one wild chorus; this is the morning song of the ' Laughing Jackass,' warning his feathered mates that daybreak is at FlG- r5«- ~

Laughing Jackass, Dacdo hand. At noon the same wild laugh is heard, and as the sun sinks into the west, it again rings through the forest.”The Laughing Jackass is a tame, even prying and inquisitive bird, coming about camping parties and others in the brush and watching with evident interest all that transpires.”It frequents every variety of situation; the luxuriant bushes stretching along the coast, the more thinly timbered forest, the belts of trees studding the parched plains, and the brushes of the higher ranges being alike favored with its presence.”

It feeds on a great variety of things, such as reptiles, insects, crabs, small mammals, etc., and places its nest in a hole in a large green tree, laying two pearl-white eggs on the chips and decayed wood at the bottom. The other species of the genus in which the tail is blue in the male and rufous in the female are the Buff Laughing Kingfisher (D. cervina) of Northwest Australia, Leach's Laughing Kingfisher (D. leachii) of Northeast Australia, and the intermediate species (D. intermedia) of New Guinea; they all possess peculiar voices, but none is quite so extraordinary as that of the one first mentioned.

 

previous bird species next bird species