Channel-Billed Cuckoo

There'd been a lot of commotion up in the big angophora tree, the Noisy Miners had been trying to hunt the Channel-Billed Cuckoo to the outer limits somewhere, anywhere but where they consider their territory!

Here is the full on angophora tree I've written about often in my posts.  Generally you just get to see some branches, and the bird I've focused on.  This is the distance away from the back of my house, that normally I have to zoom in full-throttle to get anything half-decent to share.  At the bottom right of this photograph are the tops of a crepe-myrtle in my back gardens, starting to go to seed now, and in the bottom middle, the smaller portion of light green leaves belong to the top of a lime tree.  So this gives you some idea now, quite where I start taking photos at an upstairs window.  I've even removed the fly-screen for this sole-purpose, and  since this tree is actually outside the back boundary of a neighbours house, not mine, I also need to pan my camera (set on a tripod) around to the left diagonal/corner.

The Channel-Billed Cuckoo has it's eyes set on something up there?

I decided to check for myself and found, way up high .......

I wondered at first were they the adult Channel-Billed Cuckoos in a gathering, coming to 'collect' the young-ones to fly them back to New Guinea?  Hadn't really expected they did that in big numbers though.  I cropped from the larger picture and sent it to Richard Major, an ornithologist working with the Australian Museum.

Though it was difficult to get a good impression, Richard suspected these are White-throated Needletails.  Checking my bird book then, I'd say he is right on the money, with the shape of those tails being significant, appearing more wedge-shape rather than elongated.  People can be so helpful if they choose to be; it made my day to have that verification; thanks Richard.