Pastel on Pastelmat paper 

 Image size 34 X 49cm

Australia's laughing kookaburra is one of our most noticed birds. Their ringing laughter carries all around the forest here and it is no surprise that in early white settlement days their loud laughter before dawn earned them the name of 'the bushman's alarm clock'.

This heaviest member of the world's kingfisher family has a prodigious appetite and eats anything that it can catch from snakes to mice and other smaller birds. Though it has a powerful bite it must swallow any prey whole since it has no teeth. Now a kookaburra tips the scales at around 400 grams but I have watched over a half hour period while one of our kookas worked hard to swallow a whole 300 gram black rat. No mean feet ......and it was a splendid effort involving lots of gagging and choking....with the rat's tail eventually disappearing into that powerful beak....much to the kooka's relief (and mine).

This soft pastel artwork is of one of our local family and it is truly a joy to share our lives with such amazing creatures.