Is that a currawong?

I am not a bird watcher.  I have siblings who are bird watchers, but I have never gotten into that.  I do like borrowing their binoculars and looking around in the trees.  But it's more the binoculars-are-cool thing than the birds-are-interesting thing.  Whatever. 

In any case, although I am not a bird watcher, Tim and I have been plagued by a terrible, terrible dilemma. 

Every evening for about a month, we have heard a loud bird call out our window, and we have wondered what bird makes that noise.  First, we wondered silently.  Then we voiced our wonder, and found that we were both wondering.  And then the wonder became a quest. 

Sometimes we hear the call during the day in the park, and then we stop and stare into the tops of the trees, seeing nothing.  And then the bird calls again, and we think it must be in the next tree over.  To the left, we see a movement, and we both turn our heads -- to watch a leaf flutter to the ground.  The bird is invisible.

It could be anything, in this country. 

The magpies, big beefy black birds with capes of white and long beaks, look like big stupid squawky birds.  But Australian magpies don't squawk or screech.  They sing!  They warble and trill and sing!  I have heard the song of a magpie, and it is lovely!

Australian magpie, courtesy of Wikipedia

But the bird call we wonder about is not that of a magpie.

I turned to Google for help.  I typed the call into the search engine:  "Dewey Dewey Dweep!" 

Google was not helpful.  And do you have any idea how many stupid song lyrics have the nonsense words "dewey" and "dweep" in them? 

Yesterday, we were outside chatting with a neighbor when we heard the call just over our heads.

"What is that bird?" asked Tim.

"It's a currawong," the neighbor said confidently.  "They look a little like crows or ravens, but their call is different."  And then we talked about birds for 20 minutes. 

A couple of hours later, walking back through the park with a load of groceries, we realized that the big black bird sitting on top of the park bench, staring at us with yellow eyes and a slash of white at the bottom of its wings, that bird was a currawong.  Not a raven or crow. 

Pied currawong, courtesy of Wikipedia.

But although it was only a few meters away, it just stared at us.  It did not call or sing or peep or chirp.   Nothing. 

At home, Tim played electronic recordings of currawong calls.  Unfortunately, none sounded quite like our bird call.  There are some deweys, maybe.  But not the pattern of three distinctive sounds.  That doesn't mean the call is not that of a currawong, of course.  It just means that our quest has not yet reached a satisfactory ending.

Maybe its a platypus.