I'm not really a birdwatcher but I noticed that there was very little about Australian birds, so I thought I'd mention some of my favourites here around Sydney. Apart from the kookaburras, there are many that come around that I love. The rainbow lorrikeets are gorgeous - every colour of the rainbow, there are sulphur-crested cockatoos(yellow and white), Galahs(pink and grey), as well as some very noisy customers - currawongs, magpies(both black and white and quite large) Indian mynahs and crows. In fact, I think we must have some of the noisiest birds in the world(not sure how they compare in noise/weight ratio though). Many years ago when my husband(at the time) and I were building a house, we lived in magpie territory (they are very territorial, especially in mating season) and the fights with the neighbouring kookaburras were fearful to behold. When they had a baby, the magpies brought it around for us to check out, it seemed. They totally accepted us and were always hanging around the building site. When the babies got quite big, they actually looked bigger than the parents because their feathers were not so smooth and they were more grey-looking where the parents were black, and they were the noisiest of all, going "yark yark" all the time while the parents tried to push them away and give them the hint to grow up. They were very slow to take the hint, too. We referred to them as yark yark birds. One of the parents we actually named. We called him George (not my idea). A couple of years later when I had my son, Mike wanted to call HIM George, and of course he got his way, which might give you some idea why we are not married any more. Now George (my son, not the bird) likes to tell people that he was named after a bird.

                           Jenny