Backyard visitors
These clever cockies are, increasingly, becoming part of the urban fabric, writes LEONARD CRONIN
Big, bold and brash; it’s impossible to ignore these magnificent birds as they come flapping and screeching into town. From Tasmania to the Kimberley, sulphur-crested cockatoos make their presence known in forests and woodlands, suburban parks and gardens, and, increasingly, in city centres.
Cockatoos are very smart birds. They’ve learnt to flip lids off wheelie bins to get at food scraps, visit balconies for treats, and even prise open kitchen windows. Seeds, berries, leaf buds and feeding stations in backyards are all fair game for cockatoos. But I’ve also seen them ripping into timber panels on buildings, mimicking their natural tendency to chew tree bark to keep their bill in good health and dig out insects.
They are also long-lived, with an average lifespan of about 50 years (one captive cockatoo apparently lived to the ripe old age of 120), and they use their crest to express a range of emotions, such as fear, aggression and affection.
Cockatoos seek out stands of large old trees in parks and gardens, looking for suitable hollows to raise their chicks and good sites to settle for the night. They live in groups and roost in the same area year-round, flying out every morning, screeching to each other, their powerful wings beating to an internal rhythm: flap-flap-glide, flap-flap-glide. Their distinctive raucous cry is adapted to carry through dense forests, but in the breeding season – from August to January in the south, and May to September in the north – their nesting sites become quiet zones to avoid attracting predators.
Urban cockatoos have become part of our city landscapes, and to reduce potential conflicts we must learn to share this environment. In order to better understand how cockatoos use resources, their social behaviour, movements and changes in abundance, researchers have wing-tagged a large number of Sydney cockatoos. They’ve also tagged ibises and brush turkeys, and are asking the public to report sightings using the Wingtags app (available for iPhone and Android).
Len gardens in the Northern Rivers, New South Wales