I was amazed to see one of these yesterday along Bulimba Creek, getting into the ripe native figs everywhere. Only seen them once before, in my previous stamping grounds.

Picture naturally not sharp, bird was too far away and the photo completely unplanned.

After I took ten photos, scoring an image just twice, the noisy miners took note of me and chased the big bad bird away.

Noisy miners are so aggressive—a channel billed cuckoo doesn’t impinge on them at all —it eats figs too large for them to tackle and lays its eggs in magpie, crow and currawong nests. But still the miners need to chase it away, it’s like they own this stretch of the creek.

A slightly better shot, the bird’s bright red eye put me wise to its identity.

These birds have the loudest most amazing trumpeting calls though this one just said kwark kwark kwark.

They migrate to North and Eastern Australia from New Guinea and Indonesia in spring and stay till autumn/fall.

Urban trees seem to be so confused that a lot of figs are bearing good crops of fruit.