Not a Goonie Bird, not a pterodactyl - it's the Grey Go-Away-Bird

Formerly known as the Grey Loerie, these noisy, goofy natives of southern Africa have given me hours of entertainment.

Here's someone else's much better closeup than mine to get you started. Note the:

• crest, for expressing surprise and alarm, and for contributing to the overall goofy look of our avian friend
• beady black eyes, for expressing...I've never figured out what they express. Doesn't seem to be much. The crest, voice and posture do all the expressing.
• tail - it's really long. Not good for flying, but excellent for stabilising while the bird is running up or down a branch.
• big feet - for clambering around trees, all the better to get at yummy stuff.
• beak, or yummy stuff breakdown and delivery mechanism.

Photo credit

Indeed, today is the day I tackle videos, because there's no way you can get the full Loerie (pronounced sort of like Lou Reed without the "d" at the end and "firstnamelastname" all blended into one) experience without seeing how they behave in groups and what gives them the most obvious satisfaction in life - eating and taking dust baths.

How do they sound?

It's important, mostly because it's funny, to learn they got their name of Go-Away-Bird because of the calls they make. Have a listen to this:

I trust no further explanation is needed. Kuh-weh.

No, don't go away!

A bit more explanation on their name may help. They were happily called loeries, but also Go-Away-Birds, since the dawn of recorded taxonomic time, until a group of international birding standardiser types decided to rename their whole family worldwide to turaco. Where's the turaco in the name, you ask? Excellent question. These goofballs got renamed as Grey Go-Away-Birds. (Apparently the hyphens are important.) And I have no idea why they're not, say, Go-Away-Turacos, instead of Grey Go-Away-Birds. Got a better ring to it, wouldn't you say?

Food - maybe they should have called them Grey Nom-Nom Birds instead

...because gee, do they nom-nom. En masse. And non-stop, except for dust baths and gossiping in trees.

We used to regularly recycle our apple cores by tossing them out into the garden, knowing the Grey Go-Away-Birds would come and chow them. Whatever they left, the bulbuls, sparrows and occasional barbet would have a go at. But they had to be quick, because a flock of Grey Go-Away-Birds can do justice to an apple core in minutes, and this Flock knew about the Garden, the constant supply of Apple Cores, not to mention the delights of the Flowers.

Loerie restaurant, aka the Garden

Perhaps I should mention at this point that the following photos and videos, set in the Loerie Restaurant which at the time was our garden, were taken in the heart of Africa's financial capital, steps away from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange - Africa's largest exchange. So, super urban, right? Well not at the time, in fact, quite an oasis for bird life. I counted around 20 species, some quite rare or at least uncommon in an urban setting (including a Burchell's Coucal), that flitted through that garden during our time there.

Unfortunately now the powers that be are doing their level best to level any of the remaining treed areas to raise 60-storey glass towers instead (so put the Loerie Restaurant out of business permanently), but for reference, here's what the garden in question looked like in September 2012, springtime and nom-nom season for Grey Go-Away-Birds.

In that photo, you can see a tree flowering on the right hand side - this is where much nom-noming was to happen.

Pictures of Flock food

While these birds will eat a wide variety of food from wild figs to snails, I suspect these flowers are Grey Go-Away-Bird gourmet heaven. In early days, the tree used to be covered with masses of these flowers, but once the Flock had found them, Flock memory kicked in and each year they arrived earlier and scarfed up the buds before the masses could flourish. Or flowerish. You know what I mean.

The Flock enjoys the variety of flowers on offer, from buds to fully-opened blossoms.

Nom-nom!

Nom-nom videos

Here's a brief video, taken in 2012 before I had a clue what I was doing with a lens, of some of the Flock feasting on the flowers. Would that I had discovered the wonders of the mysterious "Zoom" and "Focus" features - not to mention the Holy Grail of the Decent Camera - in 2012, then I could have given you some Attenborough-quality stuff to enjoy. I do think you can catch the nom-nom factor, though.

And another short video to show you just how much a Loerie can enjoy an apple core if it gets the chance. Nom-nom!

Apologies for the poor video quality on both of these - I had no idea what I was doing when I was filming, but I venture to suggest that the subjects manage to be stars even if the director was a flop.

Anyway, back to Flock food - as a final kicker, my delightful, enterprising neighbour had planted herself a vegetable patch that spring. Turns out flowers aren't the only thing the Flock can locust out of a garden.

Dust Bath - a post for another day

Grey Go-Away Birds enjoying a dust bath is nothing short of a vicarious spa experience. I'll share the Loerie Dust Bath with you soon, once I get the hang of this video thing...which nearly killed me today.

Hope you enjoyed meeting one of southern Africa's most engaging critters, and that you have a chance to spend some time with a flock, if not the Flock, before too long.