EARTH · GLOBAL BIRD MAP · OCEANIA
Laughing Kookaburra
Dacelo novaeguineae. The giant Australian kingfisher whose cackling laugh is the dawn chorus of the bush. Pooled openly through GBIF, the Laughing Kookaburra has been recorded 929,499 times across 15 countries — most often in Australia, New Zealand and United States. The map above glows where those records cluster. Remember the map shows where it’s been recorded, which follows observers too — not its exact range or how many there are.
Counts are GBIF occurrence records published under CC0 or CC-BY only (the openly-reusable subset), so they are a floor, not the full holding — and they track observer effort, not just the bird.
Where it’s recorded most
The countries contributing the most openly-licensed records of the Laughing Kookaburra. This leans toward nations with many active birdwatchers and open data — it is a map of records, not of where the bird is most abundant.
How to read this map
Each bright cell is a cluster of times someone recorded a Laughing Kookaburraand shared it openly — a birder’s checklist, a photo, a museum specimen. It’s a real trace of the bird’s presence, but not a range map: the glow also follows where people look, so well-birded regions shine and quiet ones fade even if the bird is there. The Laughing Kookaburrais broadly resident, so its records tend to stay within its home region — concentrated where observers are, not spread by migration. There is no LIVE badge: the figures are a snapshot dated 20 Jul 2026.