Laughing kookaburra there. He probably obtained a preserved specimen from one of the naturalists who accompanied Captain James Cook to the east coast of Australia. Edme-Louis Daubenton and François-Nicolas Martinet included a coloured plate of the laughing kookaburra based on Sonnerat's specimen in their "Planches enluminées d'histoire naturelle". The plate has the legend in French ""Martin-pecheur, de la Nouvelle Guinée"" (Kingfisher from New Guinea). In 1783, the French naturalist Johann Hermann provided a formal description of the species based the coloured plate by Daubenton and Martinet. He gave it the scientific name "Alcedo novæ Guineæ". The current genus "Dacelo" was introduced in
Kookaburra (song) Kookaburra (song) "Kookaburra" (also known by its first line: "Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree") is a popular Australian nursery rhyme and round about the kookaburra. It was written by Marion Sinclair (9 October 1896 – 15 February 1988) in 1932. Marion Sinclair was a music teacher at Toorak College, a girls' school in Melbourne she had attended as a boarder. In 1920, she began working with the school's Girl Guides company. One Sunday morning in 1932, Sinclair had a sudden inspiration in church and dashed home to write down the words to "Kookaburra". In 1934 she entered the