Many of us have been flexing our creative muscles in recent months, making the most of the coronavirus lockdown to get stuck into those DIY projects we’ve been been putting off.
But few such efforts have been as ambitious as this one.
An Australian sculptor has built a 13-foot-high electronic kookaburra – which even makes the same movements and noises as the famous Australian bird.
Farvardin Daliri has taken his 1,600-pound creation on trips around his neighborhood, towing it from the back of his car – and he’s planning to take it on tour when the lockdown is eased.
“They say why? Why not, you know?” Daliri told CNN affiliate Seven News, when asked why he’s spent the past six months making the giant kookaburra replica.
“People love it. It is something extraordinary,” he added of his work, which has been popular with neighbors in his home town of Moggill, in Queensland, northeastern Australia.
Kookaburras are kingfishers native to Australia, and the call of a laughing kookaburra is intimately associated by many with the Australian bush.
Daliri said on Twitter that he used “steel, fibre glass, bamboo and ply boards” to make his version, and that the process “took decades of practice.”
The sculptor runs a festival in the Queensland city of Townsville, and plans to show off his creation there. “He’s having the biggest laugh himself at how much people love this thing! He’s stoked!” his daughter Rafaan Daliri wrote on Twitter.
Remarkably, it’s not the first time Daliri has created a giant version of a popular Australian creature. Last year, he built a 1,500-pound koala, which he toured around Brisbane.
CNN has contacted Daliri for comment.