Blue-winged Kookaburra

Dacelo leachii

Family: Alcedinidae (Alcedinid Kingfishers, 10 species in Australia)
Size: 40-45 cm
Distribution: Within about 600 km of the coast of QLD, NT and most of Northern WA
Status: Common
Habitat: Open forests, woodlands, paperbark swamps
References: Simpson and Day, Reader's Digest

Very similar to the Laughing Kookaburra in appearance, but with blue wings, a pink bill and a darker blue tail.

It does not live in Sydney or the Blue Mountains but I took a nice photo of one at Australia Zoo so I have included it in this collection of Australian birds.

Blue-winged Kookaburra - Dacelo leachii
Photo: Australia Zoo, QLD

Blue-winged Kookaburra - Dacelo leachii
Artwork: John Gould, 'The Birds of Australia', 1848. Original Scanned Image.

Some Birdwatching Resources

Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds, Peter Slater, Pat Slater and Raoul Slater. This is a smaller field guide, and its advantage is it is easy to carry around. Its size is 21.3 x 11.4 x 2.8 centimetres, or 8.4 x 4.5 x 1.1 inches in the old scale. So it is a good one to get if you want to have your field guide with you out in the field. Unlike most of the field guides it also has illustrations of the eggs of all the birds that breed in Australia. It has very good reviews on Amazon.

Click here to Purchase from Australia (Booktopia)

Purchase from Australia (Angus & Robertson)

Click here to purchase from Australia (The Nile) $28.45 AUD (May be unavailable)

Click here to purchase from Australia (Fishpond) May be expensive.

Click here to purchase from Amazon

Field Guide to Australian Birds, by Michael Morcombe. This one has colour drawings of the eggs and the nests which not many other field guides do (I can't think of any that do). It's an excellent field guide and one of the four main ones (the other three being above this one). The weakness of this field guide is that some of the pictures of the birds aren't as good (or accurate) as the other three most used field guides. It's also the heaviest though there is a pocket edition which is much smaller and lighter.

Purchase from Australia (Booktopia)

Purchase from Australia (Angus & Robertson)

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Blue-winged Kookaburra

Dacelo leachii

Some Birdwatching Resources

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