An Expensive Lunch

On a side branch in the Banksia tree above the trench, an old man kookaburra sits. He is very large. His beak is big, broad and pointed. His wing feathers are dark brown and as he moves in the morning light, a beautiful iridescent green reflects from their edges. His flathead moves from side to side, sharp eyes looking up and down the trench, for he knows he saw something move.

He watches a family of mice come by with their busy, bustling ways. Mother, father and three fat puppies have scampered down an old tree trunk, to forage amongst the leaves and branches, picking up the Banksia and other seeds and snaffling up small creepy crawlies. Mother mouse never lets them get too far away from her, because there is always something trying to catch them; though she feels they are safe enough running around in this deep trench full of rotting leaves and storm debris.

A shadow passes over the sun; there is a great commotion of wings, claws and beak. The kookaburra seizes her without even landing on the ground and returns to his branch. A quick bang on the side of the branch and he throws her down his throat in one easy swallow. Her pups are not sure what has happened. The kookaburra swoops and scoops up the father mouse.

As he returns to his branch, Robbie says “Look at this kookaburra. He is catching something in the bottom of the trench.” As we watch he flies down again and returns with the first of three babies. This time he doesn’t even bother to knock it on the side of the branch. He just throws back his giant head, opens his beak and swallows the little mouse whole. “I wonder if he has got a mouse wheel in his tummy,” I say to Robbie. “There’s going to be lots of running around in there.”

The shadow passes over the trench and the beating of heavy wings ceases, replaced by the eerie whistle of the wind through quills. Feathers glisten in the morning sun, as the kookaburra glides down and lands on the ground, right near Grrk, a little motorbike frog. But he is thinking only of mice and with his clumsy feet and big wings he walks along the ground, seeking any other babies. They are so terrified that they run aimlessly about, not knowing how or where to hide.

He picks them up, one at a time, and tosses them down like grapes. Grrk cannot even begin to imagine their terror. Swallowed alive! Grrk cannot move. Now he knows why he has no neighbours in his lovely pool! The kookaburra makes an awkward exit from the trench, flapping back to his tree branch. He eyes the ground until he is sure there are no more mice. He begins his terrible mirth and flies away through the trees, his laughter echoing around the bush as the other kookaburras repeat his call. No kookaburra ever caught the Dugite that lived by the water tank and bit Robbie, or snatched up her babies before one of them bit my Teng Sing Tung.

In 1993, Brian Bush, the well regarded “Snake Man” of Stoneville spoke on the economic value of snakes in controlling mice and minimizing the losses of grain, both pre and post harvest. His work was particularly relevant because there was a great plague in South Australia at the time; strychnine was approved to kill the mice, and it is probable that large numbers of native predators like monitor lizards, snakes and raptors were the victims of secondary poisoning. He says that 1080 is a much better alternative.

 A mouse consumes the equivalent of its own weight about once a week. On a farm, with wheat at $350 per tonne, our kookaburra’s dinner had the economic value of about two million dollars, when considered over three years and ten generations of unrestricted mouse breeding and almost eight million dollars, the generation after that. Some lunch!