Kookaburra

For the Shovel-billed Kookaburra, see Clytoceyx.

Kookaburra
File:Dacelo novaeguineae waterworks.png
Laughing Kookaburra in Tasmania, Australia
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Clade:	Inopinaves
Clade:	Afroaves
Order:	Coraciiformes
Suborder:	Halcyoni
Family:	Alcedinidae
Subfamily:	Halcyoninae
Genus:	Dacelo Leach, 1815

Kookaburras (genus Dacelo) are terrestrial kingfishers native to Australia and New Guinea. Lacedo is an anagram of Dacelo.

File:Newly hatched chicks of Australian Laughing Kookaburra.jpg

Three newly hatched Laughing Kookaburra chicks

File:Albinok.png

An albino kookaburra

File:Dacelo novaeguineae -Sydney, Australia -frog in beak-8.png

A Laughing Kookaburra with a frog in its beak in Sydney, Australia

File:Kookaburrawithfood.png

Laughing Kookaburra with barbecue meat scraps

Species

File:Blue-winged kookaburra arp.png

A male Blue-winged Kookaburra

Spangled Kookaburra

All kookaburras are sexually dimorphic, but this is only obvious in the Blue-winged and the Rufous-bellied, where males have blue tails, females rufous.

• Rufous-bellied Kookaburra (Dacelo gaudichaud). (southern New Guinea, Saibai island)
• Spangled Kookaburra (Dacelo tyro). (Aru Islands, southern New Guinea)
• Blue-winged Kookaburra (Dacelo leachii). (northern Australia, southern New Guinea)
• Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae). (native to eastern Australia, introduced to southwest Australia)

References

Further reading

• Legge, Sarah (2004). Kookaburra: King of the Bush. Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing. ISBN 9780643090637. OCLC 223994691. 
• Kookaburra sketches and calls at the Australian National Botanic Gardens site. Archived from the original on 2008-07-20. Retrieved 2010-09-03.

External links

• More information
• MP3 download of Kookaburra sounds
• Close up video recording of Kookaburra song

This article is part of Project Bird Genera, a All Birds project that aims to write comprehensive articles on each genus, including made-up genera.