Look Who Visited Me

[Baccus]

This guy came to my bird feeder this morning.

I have had as many as 12 in the yard at once, and my husband found out why you don't leave lawn mowers out in the yard, the cockies found the padded handle bar on the mower irristable and chewed great chunks out of the padding . I also get galahs, usually only 4, a pair of short billed corellas, red wing parrots, pale headed parrots, double bar finches occasionally chestnut breasted finches, nut meg mennikins (intorduced), peaceful doves, turtle doves (introduced), sparrows (introduced). And birds that don't attend the feeder but still frequent my yard are magpies, peewees, willy wagtails, rufous wagtails, spangled drongos, blue faced honey eaters, king fishers, and a Harrier that I wish wouldn't visit and attack my avairy.

 

[Blubble37]

lucky!

 

[Cazgar]

Beautiful bird, you're so lucky having a visitor like that

 

[Baccus]

Lucky but huge and destructive, I try to limit the food available to the cockatoos other wise they just hang around all day making a racket and chewing up everthing within range of their beaks.

 

[Cazgar]

I can imagine they can be quite destructive.
Here in the uk, we're lucky to see a goldfinch & probably the most exciting thing I've seen in my garden is a red squirrel

 

[Baccus]

A pair of pale heads just arrived, about the only rosella you'll find in Central to northern QLD most of the other Rosellas are further south.

The main reason sulpher crested cockatoos do get so destructive is that they are intellegent and will explore ALL food possibilities, some people have trouble with Red Tail Black cockatoos being just as destructive. I might have to plant a black almond (terminalia) in the yard and then I'll get Red Tail Blacks visiting the yard as well, plus the leaves are great for fish tanks .

 

[Cazgar]

What pretty birds.
It's hard to imagine they are normal visitors to your garden.
As I said, in the uk we have nothing like that

 

[Baccus]

You where pretty lucky to get a red squirral in your yard, I believe that the intorduced grey squirral has nearly wiped out the smaller reds in many areas. I'll keep any eye out and see who else I can snap getting any easy feed.

 

[Cazgar]

Yes, the grey has all but wiped out our native reds.
I live in a conservation area so we still have a small population of reds.
In fact I live in such a small town, if a grey is spotted it's front page news lol

 

[Baccus]

I watched a docco on the intellagence of grey squirrals and although a noxcious pest in England they are smart little blighters, the obsticle courses that they got them to navigate just to get some food where pretty amazing . We have (or had) a feral population of chipmunks in Sydney, don't know if they are still there but I think their food sources would be pretty limited to spreading out further. Plus Brush Tail Possums would beat the hell out of them. We don't seem to have brush tail possums in my area, and it's something I miss, although I don't miss the football games played across the roof in the middle of the night, or the loud growling and grunting the males do when proclaiming their territory. Trust me in the dead of night, sound asleep and a male possum starting up near your window can scare the gerbeegees out of you.

 

[Fishy friend2]

Gosh! You are sooo lucky to have those things in your backyard! I can barely even find them in the Capitol of my state! In any petstore

 

[Baccus]

Years ago I remember seeing the black market price tag of sulpher crested cockatoos and they where up around the $10 000 US mark , and to think over here they get shot by the hundreds for damaging crops, red tail blacks are also shot for the same reason (they where closer to being $40 000US) as are long and short billed corellas and galahs.

 

[Dieses Madchen]

I want one!

 

[Baccus]

Who the cockatoo or the pale head? Pale headed rosellas look pretty and have a nice soft tinkling call but they can be brutal to even their mates in an avairy situation. I had a sulpher chrested cockatoo for a few months I found it at work it was young and starving, I baught it home, fed it up and rehabitilitated it and released it back to the wild. It was called Fuzz Bucket (what can you do when a husband insists on naming the animals?), and it still comes back to the yard on a regular basis, but the cockatoo photographed this morning was a different one to Fuzz Bucket.

 

[Dieses Madchen]

The cockatoo They are so pretty, and they have soem great personality.

http/www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgCl5_3z1GU&feature=related