I have a love-hate relationship with the kookaburras that hang about my garden, a little like the antipathy I have for the new housing development that arose a couple of years back beyond my garden fence.
In their own way, they make me feel a little uncomfortable at times, but I have learned to live with them.
By some quirk of fate, both are strangely drawn together. The new development of 10 units caused great ire in the neighbourhood and led to objections before the Hobart Council planning committee, mine among them in which I argued with some eccentricity that birds and their needs should be put before people.
I soon learned I was wasting my time stating the birds’ case. The kookaburras had a conflicting view of their own. They soon adapted to the cluster of modern homes. Some of the units were built on a bluff above the Sandy Bay Rivulet and the decks of these provided a perfect vantage point for the kookaburras to view a hunting ground of insects, skinks and tree frogs.
The objection to the development largely centred on a spread of white peppermint gums which would have to be felled. Ultimately, the local birds lost their perches but they soon learned to use the railings guarding the decks of the new homes to view the gully below them.
Not only kookaburras perched there; green rosellas, sulphur-crested cockatoos and the biggest of the honeyeaters, the yellow wattlebird.
The kookaburras remained dominant, though, which explains why this pugnacious and showy species raises the ire of many nature-lovers in Tasmania. They are not native to the state and they are disliked because they kill smaller endemic species, which have no natural defences against attack.
The kookaburras were in fact introduced at the time of federation with the notion that fauna and flora seen to be representative of the country should occur in all states.
Although there have been calls for their eradication, they are now so commonplace, and so beloved in some quarters, they are here to stay, with all their incongruous beauty and antics.
The kookaburra is a species that feels very comfortable among humans and in humankind’s environment, as I have indicated. In Hobart’s reserves they can be found at virtually every BBQ site, awaiting their chance to beg a snag or, if a morsel is not forthcoming, steal one.
At my home I now get my kookie fix by casting my eyes towards the decks across the rivulet, watching the boisterous kookaburras squabbling and arguing among themselves there.
However, my kookie watching suffered a setback earlier this year. It appears some of my near-neighbours in the development do not share my interest in kookaburras or, indeed, all things avian.
The residents have installed spikes on the deck railings to keep the perching birds at bay.