For the past few weeks, I’ve been following the progress of a baby kookaburra and its parents. The baby was housed in a termite nest on an old, dead tree. The first time that I noticed the nest was more than a month ago, on 17 November. At that time, the only sign of the baby was a faint crooning sound emerging from the termite nest. I’d heard baby kookaburras before, so I stuck around to see what would happen. Sure enough, an adult bird arrived with some food.

From that day on, I visited the nest regularly. And now, I’m delighted to report that the baby bird has safely left the nest and is being fed in the nearby trees.

The first video shows the baby kookaburra just a few days before it left the nest. The date was 14 December, almost a full month after I first noticed the nest. In the video, the baby peers curiously (and hungrily, no doubt) from the nest. You can hear an adult kookaburra off camera, calling to let the chick know that food is on its way. I moved the camera to take in the adult on a nearby branch. The bird checks the surroundings carefully, including me, to decide whether it’s safe to approach and feed the chick.

Meanwhile, the chick becomes more vociferous and sticks its head further out of the nest, impatient at the delay. The adult moved to a different branch to give itself a direct line of flight. I managed to catch a view of the adult there too, before moving back to the nest in time to see the adult arrive and feed the baby:

The parents were tireless and devoted in their care for the baby. On a couple of occasions, I spotted them foraging for food:

When the parents were not around, the chick eyed me from the safety of its home. The smallest scuffle was enough to bring an inquisitive eye to the hole in the nest:

Partially hidden but oh so curious:

The nest was on the skeleton of a dead tree:

This is an earlier, short video (taken on 3 December) showing a parent arriving to feed the chick:

When I arrived on 17 December, the nest was quiet. Again the next day, there was no activity at the nest. I explored the area and soon heard the characteristic crooning of a kookaburra youngster. I found it in a quiet, tree-filled glen, being attended to two adults in turn. It was early in the morning, and the birds were high in the trees, so I didn’t manage to get a good photo. This is the glen:

This is the only photo I have of the youngster. Alas, I didn’t get the full head in the shot, but you can see the fluffiness of the feathers and the short tail:

Common name: Laughing Kookaburra
Scientific name: Dacelo novaeguineae
Approximate length: 47 cm
Date spotted: 18 December 2020 (summer)
Location: Manly Dam Park, New South Wales, Australia

This is the view the baby kookaburra had from its nest. It looks over Manly Dam towards the dam wall, with a bottlebrush bush glowing in the early morning light. A room with a view indeed:

Finally, here’s the view that the baby must have seen when it first emerged from its nest and could look in the other direction, up the length of Manly Dam: