Laughing Kingfishers 



495 



New Guinea. The best-known of these is the Laughing Jackass, or " Bushman's 

 Clock" (D. gigas), a giant Kingfisher over seventeen inches in length, the plu- 

 mage above being brown, becoming greenish blue on the lower back and on 

 the median wing-coverts, while the white of the lower parts extends as a broad 

 collar around the neck and forward above the eye; the tail is bright rufous 

 barred with black and, with the exception of the central pair of feathers, tipped 

 with white. The female is similar to the male, but has more rufous on the crown 

 and ear-coverts. This, says Mr. Gould, " is a bird with which every resident 

 and traveler in New South Wales is more or less familiar, for, independently 

 of its large size, its voice is so extraordinary as to be unlike that of any other 

 bird." This voice, which has won for it the seemingly incongruous appellation, 

 is variously described, some calling it a " gurgling, laughing note," others a 

 " gurgling laugh, commencing in a low and 

 gradually rising to a high and loud tone," 

 while Captain Sturt says, " Its cry, which 

 resembles a chorus of wild spirits, is apt 

 to startle the traveler who may be in jeop- 

 ardy, as if laughing and mocking at his 

 misfortunes." The " Old Bushman," whose 

 delightful " Bush Wanderings of a Natural- 

 ist " has been read by so many, says: 

 " About an hour before sunrise the bush- 

 man is awakened by the most discordant 

 sounds, as if a troop of fiends were shout- 

 ing, whooping, and laughing around him 

 in one wild chorus; this is the morning 

 song of the ' Laughing Jackass,' warning 

 his feathered mates that daybreak is at 

 hand. At noon the same wild laugh is 

 heard, and as the sun sinks into the west, it again rings through the forest." 

 The Laughing Jackass is a tame, even prying and inquisitive bird, coming about 

 camping parties and others in the brush and watching with evident interest all 

 that transpires. " It frequents every variety of situation; the luxuriant bushes 

 stretching along the coast, the more thinly timbered forest, the belts of trees 

 studding the parched plains, and the brushes of the higher ranges being alike 

 favored with its presence." It feeds on a great variety of things, such as rep- 

 tiles, insects, crabs, small mammals, etc., and places its nest in a hole in a large 

 green tree, laying two pearl-white eggs on the chips and decayed wood at the 

 bottom. The other species of the genus in which the tail is blue in the male 

 and rufous in the female are the Buff Laughing Kingfisher (D. cervina) of North- 

 west Australia, Leach's Laughing Kingfisher (D. leachii*) of Northeast Australia, 

 and the intermediate species (D. intermedia} of New Guinea; they all possess 

 peculiar voices, but none is quite so extraordinary as that of the one first 

 mentioned. 



Wood Kingfishers. Although not possessing any very marked character- 



FlG. 154. Laughing Jackass, Dacelo 

 gigas. 



