Pheasant Coucal – an interesting afternoon in the garden…

An interesting afternoon in my garden – we were visited by a couple of pheasant coucals.

The first indications they were there was a loud ‘whoop whoop whooping’ on the roof of my house. I thought my appearance with a camera resulted in what I think was a ‘younger’ bird taking off into a my neighbours palm tree and screeching and carrying on – but it appears the local noisy miners had got wind of these ‘intruders’ (basically any bird that isn’t a noisy miner) and were out in force divebombing this poor pheasant.
A pheasant(s) is often making a trek along our fenceline and to the reserve behind us – talk about setting up a tizz amongst some of the other resident reserve birdlife – kookburras ‘kooking’ in the middle of the day, noisy mynas bombing, currawongs calling – even the magpies can get agitated. Not sure why the pheasant draws such attention.
This ‘younger’ pheasant’ then fluffed and preened and screeched for a while high up in the palm tree. Ever so quietly another pheasant called as it crept along my tree-lined fenceline and across the road to a neighbours house – all I could see was the marking on its wings and the leaves rustling…

The noisy ‘younger’ pheasant then took off to the fig trees behind our house – they are not really graceful flyers and always seem to struggle – flying shorter distances.

It then flew to the ground – where these birds always seem more comfortable – and ran along and flew up into a camphor laurel. All the time screeching and drawing the ire of the local magpies. Eventually the ‘older’ pheasant returned to the reserve area to where the ‘younger’ one had waited. All is now quiet….