6:15 am, I’m feeding Poppy Peahen
outside. The sun isn’t all the way up yet. It’s hard to see the Cockatoos in
the gum. There’s not light enough to count them.
I know they’re there, louder than any alarm clock. I try to focus the camera on specks of white in the trees.
The volume as they fly off screeching is enough to wake
every other living thing in a 3 mile radius. Our dog agrees, barking that a flock of them could possibly wake some non-living things as well.
They
look angelic on take-off, as long as you block your ears. They act like
devils of the sky. To sharpen their beaks they eat holes in wooden verandas, railings, doors and windows. Also, to decimate entire crops of fruit from a tree or trees
without eating much. The cockatoos peck holes in one spot of each stone fruit and pluck them off branches for fun. No fun when it happens to be the most beautiful peaches in the world from our orchard. Remarkable that so much sound and violence comes from feathered things that are quite so pretty.
These big, beautiful birds create a
riot of noise.
Their morning parties are a (sulphur-crested) scream.
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