What bird is that?

http://www.888dag.com/

For about a week, at something like 4 in the morning, a bird has started calling from a neighbour's tree. And I mean calling. It's pretty relentless for the next three hours. And the feathered friend is back in the evening - with the same plaintive cry.

It's so loud, it's unbelievable. So loud, it's comical.

A neighbour and I were falling about with laughter tonight about the outrageously penetrating nature of its call. As part of my quest to find the culprit, I had the binoculars out on Sunday and it looked like a big black bird with a dash of red on the side of its head, way up high in a flame tree.

It has a hooting kind of call - with something like seven to 10 hoots in a row. Then it rests. Then it hoots again. I don't have much of an ear for music, so I can't work out if it's going up or down the scale, but the hoots seem to change.

I'm going to find out what it is. Needless to say, I've joked with Max about how he could solve the sleeping problems of the neighbourhood. Me-ow!

Hoots mon! Bring on the earplugs. Nature is calling.