The conspicuous call of the eponymous Coo-ee bird - a migratory forefather of the notorious black cuckoo - is part of the Peninsula beach culture. Very few of us would be able to identify the bird as a cuckoo, although we feel a strong bond to the tormented soul when its melancholic calls for help interrupt our afternoon nap. We want to comfort this elusive bird on the edge of dementia and wonder about the origins of its crazed torment. The story of the Coo-ee bird starts a million years ago when it was as happy as a lark, but evolution turned it away from the gardens of respectability when it transformed this middle class suburban songbird into the gang of squatters and layabouts known as the Cuckoo clan.

Cuckoos are notorious parasitic breeders. they are good-looking and very smart. They neither make nests nor rear their young. Instead, they deposit their eggs in other birds' nests for the new foster parents to incubate and rear.

The male arrives on the Peninsula before the hen bird. It isi thought that they use the same nest each year. Known also as the Black Cuckoo, it is a large black bird about the size of a Maggie, but not stocky, with a longer tail and could easily be mistaken for a Satin Bower bird. After leaving Indonesia each year alone to wander down the New South Wales coast in search of a skirt, it arrives for summer as far south as the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Eighty years ago, this elusive bird, also known as the common Koel, was a rarity as far south as Sydney. Yet today, their numbers are increasing. This can be attributed to the availability of a variety of introduced fruit trees, such as mulberries and camphor laurels. The grevillea explosion has also attracted the Red Wattle birds into the northern suburbs.

The arrival time of the Coo-ee birds must coincide with the breeding cycle of the foster parents. On the Peninsula, the Red Wattle bird is the most patronised species, although twelve other known species - including the Green Thrush, Pee-Wee (Magpie Lark), the Wattle bird, White-rumped Minor, Figbird, Paradise Rifle bird and the Blue-faced Honey-eater - are used in other habitats. Nature protects the Red Wattle bird from the parasitic breeding of the Coo-ee bird by allowing them to rear a brood of their own before the Koels arrive from Indonesia. The stunning blue-black male Coo-ee bird flies in from Indo well ahead of its less-attractive, cocoa-coloured female, hopefully in time to find a suitable nest before the arrival of his hen, who must reserve all of her energies for laying just one dove-sized egg, which must be deposited in the nest before the Red Wattle bird has laid her last two or three of hers.

It appears that the wary Coo-ee bird now recognises the urgency of the egg-laying situation. He perches high in the tree tops, waits anxiously for the arrival of his hen and starts up the greeting calls in anticipation of a quick reply. The first calls to the hen are far reaching slow "kooeel" sounds, often heard after rain, and some know the Coo-ee as the rainbird. These are the monotonous calls of duty rather than passion. After a few days, patience turns into anguish as the red-eyed rainbird believes the time to deposit the egg is running out. The slow romantic "kooeel" call then switches to a brisk rising "quoy-quoy-quoy, quoy-quodel, quodel, quodel" and then into the rising demented love sick "wirra wirra wirra wirra" call, which continues often into the night and starts again before sunrise. These pleading calls are the hormonal expression of pent up desire that every full-blooded male homosapien understands so well

Suddenly, the demented late-night calls stop when the first hen arrives and the love-struck couple then becomes more visible, indulging in wild chases through trees and gardens, often pursued by other birds, especially those species that serve as fosterers.

By the end of March, the Coo-ee birds have left their summer playground to spend winter in Indonesia.

What a life!

Copyright © 2002 Rob Marshall, All Rights Reserved.