Pheasant Coucal

Usually a reclusive bird, the Pheasant Coucal (Centropus phasianus) is often seen as well as heard in the spring-through-summer breeding cycle: and at times well away from the marshy habitat that gives the species its other name of Swamp Pheasant. In various corners of the Redlands the birds' trademark booming call (a repeated" oop oop oop oop" between cock and hen, the female's note deeper) carries for some distance even over traffic noise.

The Pheasant Coucal (which some argue isn't a Pheasant at all) is quite a common species of Australia's wetter coastal areas to north and east. An awkward flier the bird prefers life at ground level except when needing a perch to dry-off heavy, dew or rain drenched feathers. They are a handsome species, changing colour according to the time of year. In winter, both sexes are chestnut brown above, with paler streaks; tail, a mottled dark brown. Breeding plumage transforms the head, neck and back to shiny, sooty black. The wings are barred chestnut and tail, black barred with grey.

A Coucal's diet includes small reptiles, frogs and insects, and - regrettably - sometimes eggs and chicks of other birds. But unlike with most other cuckoos, their eggs aren't laid in other birds' nests. The Coucal nest is a dome-shaped affair at ground level, built inside reeds or thick grass, and open-ended so the head and tail of the sitting bird poke out. Though vulnerable to animal predation, the nest can be tricky for us humans to locate, due to an often difficult terrain.

It's hard to imagine these quite handsome birds producing new chicks that "only a parent could love". Well described in Readers' Digest Bird Book as "a startling sight", for the first week the young have "shiny black bodies covered in coarse white threads...large, dull black eyes...gaping, orange mouths showing scarlet, black-tipped tongues". I've only seen photos but that was enough!

The birds are thought to often breed twice a season in close succession. Judging by the Coucal Carryings On round my corner of Victoria Point in recent years, this does seem likely. The hazards of human habitat, especially for a large (60 - 80cm) clumsy bird with limited flight power, are recklessly disregarded - even to the occasional dash across busy Thompson Street. A breeding pair has been known to use our separate town house roofs for uninhibited "call and response"; while a solitary bird, crashing about in my elderly neighbour's shrubs, brought an excited invitation to "Come and see a Bower Bird in my garden".

While the attractions of our now populous area to a Swamp Pheasant seem unclear maybe it's a racial memory of a previous small wetland, pre-developer? Or perhaps we're near enough to the Egret Street rookery to be part of Coucal courtship?