Summer’s here and I’ve been enjoying birdwatching again from my top-floor apartment, and I’m happy to report that the pied currawong pair in my neighborhood are successfully raising their own chicks this year – and not an adopted channel-billed cuckoo kid like they did last summer.
CHICK DOWN!
EARLY NOVEMBER 2023: I noticed the faint sounds of baby birds coming from some distance away, and soon discovered the nest of the resident currawong couple atop a palm tree in the backyard of one of the neighboring houses. I counted three chicks in it, and they were black – just like their parents. (Hurray!)
About three weeks later, I spotted a flutter of wings in the trees directly outside my bedroom window, and the most precocious of the clutch (and the most adventurous, obviously!) was clinging vertically onto a tree, trying to follow its parent but not quite succeeding.
The following morning, as I went down to pick up my newspaper, I saw the chick on the ground of my apartment block, walking towards the backstreet away from its nest. Ah, there you go… you bit off more than you could chew! I hastily walked ahead and blocked the chick’s path to make it turn around, urging it back towards the nest.
To hop along 100 meters on the ground was a massive effort for the little chick and, exhausted, it finally came to a stop not far from its nest. But just as I tried to scoop it up meaning to return the youngster to the neighbors’ backyard, it suddenly uttered an almighty shriek:
“MOOOOOOOM!!!”
…Well, it didn’t actually say “Mom”, but you get the picture. And sure enough, an alerted parent came flying in, issuing rapid-fire “currawong-currawong-currawong!” warning shots at me. Whoa, easy… I’m only trying to help your chick here!
Reluctantly, I left the fallen chick there on the ground and retreated, with the parent bird following me from behind. Currawongs may not be as aggressive as hormone-charged magpies, but they still give you a menacing chase alright!
A short time later, I returned to the site to check on the chick, but it was nowhere to be seen. And the sight of Bobby – a resident cat – nonchalantly sitting nearby made me fear the worst…
Three days later, the remaining two chicks also left the nest – and I breathed a massive sigh of relief when I counted three chicks in the trees: the fallen chick must have somehow managed to fly back up on its own.
REBEL, SOOK AND ‘NEVILLE NOBODY‘
The three chicks have different personalities, and I nicknamed the most adventurous one – the one I found on the ground – ‘Rebel’. Independent Rebel seems to have its own agenda and became increasingly absent as it grew older.
The other two chicks are quite chummy with each other and always sticking close together. I nicknamed one of them ‘Sook’, because it’s constantly begging and follows its parent around. Well, it was quiet to begin with but, one stormy evening, the parents left the chicks alone in the trees. Spooked by lightning and gusty winds, Sook began calling for Mom and Dad – and has been begging incessantly ever since.
The third chick is well-behaved and doesn’t really stand out one way or another – so you might as well call it ‘Neville Nobody’, as we say in Australia!
The three currawong chicks, combined, are nowhere near as demanding as a single cuckoo kid. They respect their parents’ ‘me time’ and wait patiently until they are ready to feed them again.
As they gradually expanded their feeding territory, I was able to take photos of the family from my windows. However, Mom and Dad never like my presence, and they would glare at me with those menacing yellow eyes. And I’d glare back at them and go: “This is my territory, as well – like it or not, I’m not going anywhere!”
NEW YEAR 2024: ‘CHICKS HAVE LEFT THE BUILDING’
It’s now been six weeks since the chicks left their nest in late November. Unlike the Cuckoo Kid which disappeared from my neighborhood after a 10-day feeding frenzy, the juvenile currawongs are still sticking close to their nesting territory.
By early January, the three siblings have mastered the rhythmical flight and ‘bum-up’ landing typical of the currawong. And one of them – presumably a male – began practicing the “currawong” call but not quite making it. (It sounded more like “Grrrhh…” without the “wong” bit.)
Amazingly, two chummy siblings are also building a nest, gathering twigs and placing them in a fork of the tree right outside my bedroom window. I’m not sure if they are just practicing, or if there’s serious teenage love going on. I just hope they are not committing an act of incest…
Then, one evening in mid-January, the currawong clan convened a family conference of sorts. It’s very rare to see all five of them at the same time but there they were – Mom and Dad on a rooftop, and the three juveniles on a TV aerial nearby. It seemed as if the adults were saying: “Children, you are big enough to fend for yourselves now. Go find your own frontier…”
Soon after that ‘conference’, the young currawongs have disappeared from my neighborhood. Just once or twice, I saw Sook return to pick on some avocado fruits, but that was the last I’ve seen any of them.
These days, all I see is a forlorn figure of a parent currawong sitting alone on a tree branch. The ‘nest’ the chicks were building is left unfinished in the tree.
RETURN OF THE CUCKOO KID …OR IS IT?
In the meantime, when the currawong chicks were still in the nest, I saw an adult channel-billed cuckoo a few times, perched in the tree outside my bedroom window – once with its partner. If these migratory birds come back to the exact same location they grew up in, then it could well be the grown-up Cuckoo Kid paying a visit to its old joint. At the sight of this cuckoo in their nesting territory, the currawong parents went bonkers to protect their young – but if this is the very same Kid they raised last summer, then they are waging a war on their own foster child. How bizarre…
Adult channel-billed cuckoos are completely friendless. Wherever they turn up, you would ‘hear’ their presence first – for all the other birds in the vicinity go berserk and commence a joint warfare on the poor buggers. Nesting currawongs chase them with much more venom and urgency than they do me, with small but aggressive noisy miners joining in the attack. Sometimes even crows and rainbow lorikeets kick up a racket with them. This is usually followed by the ominous “kwawk- kwawk- kwawk…” cuckoo calls in protest – and you’d almost hear Darth Vader’s Theme from Star Wars playing in the background to go with it!
Main image: Cute, fluffy bundle of joy – currawong fledgling spreading its wings