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Photos: Catherine Watson
By Catherine Watson
A STRANGE cracking noise wakes me just before dawn. It takes me a while to locate it. Just outside my bedroom window, a flock of yellow tailed black cockatoos is cracking open the nuts on my pin cushion hakea, spitting out the tough husks and gorging on the kernels.
You usually hear black cockatoos well before you see them but when they come to raid my hakea they are strangely silent, though there’s nothing delicate about their table manners. They’re wrenching off small branches, scattering the leaves and twigs.
A STRANGE cracking noise wakes me just before dawn. It takes me a while to locate it. Just outside my bedroom window, a flock of yellow tailed black cockatoos is cracking open the nuts on my pin cushion hakea, spitting out the tough husks and gorging on the kernels.
You usually hear black cockatoos well before you see them but when they come to raid my hakea they are strangely silent, though there’s nothing delicate about their table manners. They’re wrenching off small branches, scattering the leaves and twigs.
When they visit the huge pines in the Wonthaggi Cemetery to feast on the nuts they drop the cones all around, like a car-load of yobboes chucking their wrappers as they leave McDonalds.
They’re hard to miss with their playful flight. “Freewheeling” comes to mind. And that strange keening sound they make – is it mournful or joyful? The latter, I suspect. They are such jokers of birds, it always feels like a blessing when they visit.
We can be misled by their very obviousness. My birdo friends tell me they used to see flocks of hundreds. These days the flocks are much smaller – seven or eight birds, maybe a dozen.
Their conservation status is listed as being of least concern, but their numbers are also reported to be declining. Let’s hope they don’t go the way of the once common koala.
They’re hard to miss with their playful flight. “Freewheeling” comes to mind. And that strange keening sound they make – is it mournful or joyful? The latter, I suspect. They are such jokers of birds, it always feels like a blessing when they visit.
We can be misled by their very obviousness. My birdo friends tell me they used to see flocks of hundreds. These days the flocks are much smaller – seven or eight birds, maybe a dozen.
Their conservation status is listed as being of least concern, but their numbers are also reported to be declining. Let’s hope they don’t go the way of the once common koala.
*****
A small bird has been hanging around my yard. I keep catching a glimpse of yellow and red, darting amongst the lush spring growth, but it’s moving so fast I can never quite work out what it is. Finally it comes to rest on my bean pole and I see that it’s a spotted pardalote. What gorgeous colours - a male of course.
At first I think he's interested in the broad beans, which have just started flowering. And then I see: he's after the stinging nettle seeds. He hovers like a humming bird to reach them, then finds a better way, swinging from one of the ropes on the frame to gorge on them.
The next day he brings his mate back with him. He keeps watch while she eats her fill of nettle seeds.
The next day he brings his mate back with him. He keeps watch while she eats her fill of nettle seeds.
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a couple of paddocks on the left have been full of black swans recently.
They've made me smile but also concerned about the imminent arrival of the bird flu which might wipe them out completely. What an appalling thought.