Blue-winged Kookaburra, Dacelo leachii, This smaller cousin of our Laughing Kookaburra has a distribution from about Brisbane in southern Queensland across the Top End and as far down the Western Australian coast as the Shark Bay areaas well as southern New Guinea.

This smaller cousin of our Laughing Kookaburra has a distribution from about Brisbane in southern Queensland across the Top End and as far down the Western Australian coast as the Shark Bay area as well as southern New Guinea.
The habitats of both species overlap but the Blue-winged seem to prefer to be near water and are found in paperbark swamps, among timber on watercourses and open woodlands adjacent to wetlands. Though not as common as it’s cousin the Blue-winged can readily be seen here along watercourses like Hedlow Creek or on the fringes of our many wetlands.
In the summer wet season, insects, reptiles and frogs make up a higher proportion of their diet, while they eat arthropods such as crayfish, fish, snakes, earthworms and small birds and mammals at other times.
They are sexually dimorphic with a blue tail in the male and a rufous tail with blackish bars in the female, like many of our birds they are cooperative breeders, the group being made up of a breeding pair and one or more other birds who help raise the young, breeding occurs from September to December in a nest in a hollow high up in a tree.
Their call is a harsh cackling and quite unlike that of the Laughing Kookaburra.