It was no laughing matter when this cheeky opportunistic kookaburra fancied a duck dinner in a suburban backyard.
The Aussie icon – famous for its crescendo chuckling call – grabbed the baby duckling and flew to a perch in a Caringbah garden in Sydney’s south.
But the terrestrial tree kingfisher had almost bitten off more than it could chew when it tackled the mighty duck mouthful for the camera. The carnivorous bird – which normally feeds on small rodents and reptiles – took a staggering 15 minutes to spin the de.ad duckling around and swallow it headfirst. Photographer Helen Grant regularly snaps the feathered visitors to her back paddock and posts her beautiful pictures on social media.
Usually, these are pixel-perfect photos of Australia’s gorgeous wildlife in the light, rather than these bleak images of life in the bush. Ms Grant stated that if the black duck duckling had been alive, she would have attempted to preserve it, but it was de.ad when the kookaburra came.
‘How much can a kookaburra consume?’ ‘Well, in this instance, a whole duckling,’ she said on Facebook. ‘If the chick had been alive, I would have preserved it.’
‘There were 20 photographs in all – taken late at night in weak light with a slow shutter speed – but only these tell the tale and took 15 minutes to eat,’ she said.
