Laughing kookaburra hands without warning, by swooping in from a distance. People often feed them pieces of raw meat. Laughing Kookaburras are often kept in zoos. The kookaburra is also the subject of a popular Australian children's song, the "Kookaburra" which was written by Marion Sinclair in 1934. Recordings of this bird have been edited into Hollywood movies for decades - usually in jungle settings - beginning with the Tarzan series in the 1930s, and more recently in the film "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" (1997). Laughing kookaburra The laughing kookaburra ("Dacelo novaeguineae") is a bird in the kingfisher subfamily Halcyoninae. It
The Life of Birds possibly show paths this evolution may have taken. One of the biggest birds to have ever existed was the terror bird, which proliferated after dinosaurs vanished and stood up to 2.5 metres tall. By comparison, the ostrich, while not closely related, is the largest and heaviest living bird. It was probably the evasion of predators that drove most birds into the air, so their flightless cousins evolved because they had few enemies. Accordingly, such species are more likely to be found on islands, and Attenborough visits New Zealand to observe its great variety, most especially the kiwi. Also depicted is