Food
What do they eat?
The laughing kookaburra is a carnivorous bird that feeds on a wide variety of shell fish, bony fish, insects, small mammals, and carrion. Mollusks that the consume include slugs and various species of snails, species of annelids include earthworms, arthropods consist of centipedes and millepeds, grasshoppers, several species of crickets, cicadas, beetles, weevils, damselflies, mantids, caterpillars, armyworms, and ants, crustaceans include crayfish, land crabs, and yabbies, and arachnids include spiders [7].
As for chordates, the laughing kookaburra consumes fish such as tailor and redfin perch, amphibians, reptiles including lizards and snakes, aves including domestic ducklings, young chickens crows, and other young birds, and mammals including rodents, mice, and rats [7].
Predatory Behavior
Prey is usually caught by this bird on the ground, but they may occasionally acquire prey from shallow water [9]. It waits perched on a branch for its prey to approach, then it flys down to the ground, lands next to its target, grabs it with its beak, flys up to its perch once again holding what it has captured and strikes it against the perch until it is immobilized [9]. It then swallows it in one piece [9]. Sometimes with snakes, the kookaburra will either drop them from a height or use the ground to hit them against in order to immobilized them [9].