Each summer a pair of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos comes to visit. You know they've arrived when across your garden a deafening shriek almost makes your hair stand on end.
This year they've brought a young one. They're a comical, intelligent, nimble bird with a gleam in their eyes.
If I get some seeds for them, I'm hoping they'll stick around and keep me entertained.
sunflower seeds? Or do they prefer something else?
ReplyDeleteYes, Diana, sunflower seeds - they've had them before - are the go! They've only dropped by once and all I had on hand were some hazlenuts they only played with!
Deletenice birds? does the kid screech, too?
ReplyDeleteI reckon the kid screeches too, but it's the folks you gotta watch out for! I LOVE the sound.
DeleteI am so envious! I cannot imagine having such a fabulous bird randomly fly in for a visit! Enjoy!
ReplyDeleteBonnie, all sorts of marvellous birds buzz in, from absolutely tiny silver-eyes and thornbills, to butcher-birds and kookaburras, even the odd hawk I've seen, rainbow lorikeets, and recently, a pair of ducks. A sight for sore eyes ( and ears )!
DeleteAmazing, hope you are keeping cool.
ReplyDeleteHi Paul, not always cool, so to speak, but trying to feel it, look it and act it! Our weather's up and down. Today's only been about 20 degrees Celsius, a real relief. Thankyou for your comment.
DeleteDear Faisal,
ReplyDeleteThey are such handsome birds.
Do you get those black ones? They don't have such a large comb on their heads.
The cockatoo's screech is a dry sound I always think - evocative of the Australian bush and there is a funny children's story, a take on The Three Bears - where the bears are koalas and Goldilocks is a cockatoo. I sometimes read my copy to the children and we then have a discussion about these two Australian icons!
I like Cockatoos coming in pairs. Where our house is, in outer Melbourne, they live most of the year in the trees on the ridge and try to out-do the ravens in a noise making competition!
Bye for now
Kirk
Dear Kirk,
DeleteI love encountering real Australian nature. Near to where I am is a green belt and a couple of lakes made from former sand mines, so we get alot of birdlife.
I see the much rarer red and yellow tailed cockatoos here once in a blue moon - their calls are even more evocative, and their flight is mesmerizingly slower.
We're so lucky - we have incredibly delicate little birds like the wrens - we get blue fairy wrens in the garden at certain times - but these strong personalities too. Corellas fly over too sometimes, with their haunting yelp/whistle.
The sounds the birds make seem to be magnified in the vast blueness, or more pertinent.
I hope you can get back here before too long!
Cheers, my friend,
Faisal.
Me too Faisal!
DeleteI think that we will move back in eighteen months time.
Wow - that's one handsome visitor, Faisal. Makes all our birds seem a little er, mundane. Hearing terrible things re the heat and fires down under - thinking of you. Dave
ReplyDeleteSomewhere I've read says we have the most diverse birdlife in the world. There are reasons for that, among them, the timelessness, lack of 'development' for so long, until recent times and, despite the sun and fires and floods, there is a real tenderness in this land, this land without major carnivores. It's something I can intuit but find difficult to define in words.
DeleteFortunately, there've been no fires near Melbourne, but there have been any number elsewhere, including a pretty massive one in Tasmania. They're terrifying.
Aboriginals understood how to use fire ( and how to deter fire), but scientific man knows less than he thinks, and so outbreaks of fire become devastating contagions. I guess the Aboriginals were always in transit, whereas we like to own property! IE: we sit in its path.
Cheers Dave.
Jeg kom bare lige forbi.
ReplyDeleteTak for de smukke fuglebilleder.
Ha´ en god søndag aften.
Takk for a besoke. Alle de beste til deg!
Delete