The greatest bird of all time. I’m serious. If you think you can come up with a better bird than the Sulphur Crested well then good luck, you will need it… but you can’t can you! No!
Best. Bird. Ever.
Destructive, charming, opinionated, bitey, long lived, cranky, ridiculous, screechy bird. Hooray! They make me want to cheer.
Everyone has a good cockatoo story, and all stories about cockatoos are good ones. Except the bad ones, I don’t like those, people can be wretched.
Hiding
This particular bird and its friends have recently figured out that you can chew all the way through the outside of a coconut until you can stick your head inside and eat it. This one, as you can see if you look carefully, has coconut dust on it’s head. However it did not want to be photographed, so every time I got in it’s line of sight, it would hide. Stalk off down a palm frond and then occasionally peek out. Here it is pretending not to look at me. Hysterical. I love them.
UPDATE – UPDATE – UPDATE
Fierce Sulphur Crested Cockatoos attack Crikey Offices.
Wed – October 11.30 am. While the hapless crikey hacks toiled away inside to produce the daily “internet newsletter” know around the world as the Crikey Daily Email, a band of ferocious Cacatua galerita landed on the windows of our seventh floor hovel and totally freaked us out. It was excellent! They eventually flew off to terrorise commuters and people wandering near the river.
Help help! When cockatoos attack.
6 Comments
Dear Firstdog…I’m with you on cockatoos! Our local liquor store is owned by one. He’s 22-year-old Spike who talks to customers all day while Rod his best mate works the till. Spike’s a magnificent Cacatua Galerita who lifts his wings so you can scratch his ‘wing-pits’? Rod took him to the Pottsville fruit shop the other day to weigh him. He clocked in at a kilo and a bit. Sometimes he gets silly and yells OI! OI! Come here! And dances up and down on his perch. He doesn’t have a cage so if he likes you he hops on your shoulder and will stick his head down your shirt. When he gets home he goes outside into the backyard and screeches at the other birds to scare them off. When they don’t move he just stares at them. He loves being sprayed very lightly with a hose and goes round in circles until he’s dizzy. At night he turns his head backwards and puts it under his feathers, standing on one leg. I wish he could have a better career – he’s so smart and talented!
My dear old grandfather W. R. Weiley (Member for Clarence, President of Prisoners’ Aid Society, Secretary of Volunteer Flood Rescue Water Brigade etc, thank you very much) used to sing this song on his back verandah, accompanied by his ukulele in the long Summer’s days of my childhood visits to Grafton. Here goes, as best as I can recall:
There’s an old cockatoo on the v’randah,
He lets down our bikes ev’ry day
He unscrews the valves and the valve caps
And then throws the damn things away
At first we all though it was funny
But now it gets right on our nerves
And a grave ‘neath the ooooold jacaranda
Is the fate that old cocky deserves.
Some notes: Grafton is justly famous for its avenues of Jacarandas and if you should be in those parts in November there’s a festival, with its own Queen quite as good as anyone else’s, so bravo! http://www.jacarandafestival.org.au/ I think we ought to have a rolling schedule of festivals across the country, as they do in Japan. We don’t, though, because I’m not in charge.
The verandah of my recollection was at the back of the house on Villier’s Street, very high up because the house was on stilts due to regular flooding of the still mighty Clarence river. More recently of course developers have thought it sensible to build houses without stilts very close to the river with predictable results. We may well all be back on stilts soon enough. The point is though that I never met the cockatoo of the song as it was not on this verandah; it was on the verandah of Weiley’s pub and had found its rest some years before I was born. However I was led to believe at the time that the song related a true story, and I don’t see why not.
V.
I would like some recognition for my photographic skills Dog!! Note to readers, Eleri took amazing cockatoo at the window pic on camera phone -didn’t it turn out well?
Now Firstdog just quit the hysteria. We need a bit of calm here as an amazing best ever bird peers through the double-glazing of a seventh floor skyscraper. He’s a lone tike struggling to make contact with his best friends after rising into the mega ether by mistake. He doesn’t need hamfisted hacks taking photos of his predicament. He needs a helping hand. Now just tell the guys to open the window with that little alan key and be a bit human for a change. A cheery hi and come on in will have him eating out of their hands. PS I know the flu makes you grumpy be maybe Cacatua Galerita struck a bit of clear air turbulence like the Qantas jet and needs some first aid for his pitch problem?
Christine, there was a whole gang of them. With little crowbars!
Oh. Not good. Sounds like that flock of starving pensioner cockies that I hear is hitting on high-rise offices for their vitamins. Driven into our nation’s metropolises by the damn drought and economic climate the poor little blighters are desperate for survival. Were the guys all sitting around gourmandising on tartes, creme gateaux and ordinary old baguettes? If they come back just toss out a honied brioche and wave. We have to do this sort of thing in times of such hardship.