Albino kookaburras found in N. Australia

Australian wildlife workers said they had discovered a never-before-seen pair of blue-winged albino kookaburras, believed to have been swept from their nests in a wild storm.

The six-week-old birds, re-nowned for their laughing cry, were found waterlogged at the base of a tree by a cattle farmer near Ravenshoe, in far northern Queensland, said Harry Kunz from the Eagles Nest Wildlife Sanctuary.

The pink-eyed, pink-beaked and starkly white creatures, thought to be sisters, are the first specimens of their kind ever found in Australia, Mr Kunz said. They are still too young to feed themselves or fly.

“Everybody asks me ‘are they rare?’ They have never been seen because in nature they would not survive a few days out of the nest because their white colour sticks out and every reptile, owl or predator will get them,” Mr Kunz said.

“In the whole of Australia I know there are about three white laughing kookaburras but they are not albino, they have black eyes. For blue wings nobody knows that they exist or can be hatching in this colour.”

Wild storms which had recently rocked the area were believed to have swept the unusual chicks from their nests, he added. Feeding on a diet of small mice, cicadas and moths, the birds were in good health and would be raised at the sanctuary, said Mr Kunz.