Yesterday, three sulphur-crest cockatoos visited out backyard.
They’re a large white parrot – native to Australia and New Guinea – and commonly found in urban areas. Pete gave me five minutes to take some quick photos before he chased them away – we definitely don’t want them adding our garden to their feeding route!
Named for the prominent yellow crest on their heads, they also have a pale yellow patch on their face, and eyes which always make me think of the stick-on wibbly ones used for craft projects…
Their beaks are powerful and intimidating, but I was amazed at how deftly this one used hers (his?) to pick out seeds from the chickweed…
They’re quite beautiful, with a seriously cheeky stare, but they can be a major pest in parts of the country, decimating crops and even eating away at outdoor furniture and timber decking. We’re hoping they don’t find our neighbour Mark’s passionfruit vine!
This post is for all our overseas friends – everyone here in Australia knows these birds well, and either loves them or hates them!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
Hullo cocky.
I am yet to have an incident with them so I love them! So cute I think.
Claire, you might want to keep them away from your new garden though, trust me on this one.. :)
Much better to look at than to listen too. Most afternoons we have flocks of them fly over our house. Waaaaaaaaaa Waaaaaaaaa Waaaaaaaa. Haha. Love your photos, they are gorgeous birds.
Don’t they make a ruckus! Our neighbour has a flock of rainbow lorikeets that haunt his backyard, and the noise they make at 4pm is deafening!
We’ve been visited too in the last couple of months; two pecan trees stripped of nuts. They attack them while they’re still green and soft.
Bugger. That’s annoying for you Barb!
I have a love hate relationship with cockys. It is the same with magpies that swoop on golden haired people in nesting season, not good, but their songs are beautiful.
Madge, Pete remembers walking to school with an ice cream container on his head because the maggies would peck!
Aren’t they amazing! They started coming to the Blue House when we first bought it and we encouraged them for a while until I realised that the parrots had stopped visiting the garden.
Liz, possibly the only good thing about the cockies arriving (other than seeing them) is that they’ve chased the rainbow lorikeets out of the tree on the street for a few days. A flock of over a hundred lorikeets normally roost there.
Its so true with aussies having a love/hate relationship with the cockatoo….I think they are gorgeous looking birds, but they are a real pain. They destroy trees and crops….they do make cute pets though! We had one growing up who would fly around the farm during the day and then come inside at night for some family time! xx
Kylie, what an intelligent bird! I love that it would come home to roost – clearly it knew how to get fed! :)
When I lived in the ACT we had what seemed like hundreds of the world’s biggest Cockatoos and they had no fear of humans, trying to cross the road was very daunting when the ground was covered in the seed pods they were after! They were also quite the alarm clock every morning. And evening. Absolutely beautiful though
Bec, that would have been very scary. Those beaks are quite intimidating!
Living in the middle of parkland in the Southern Highlands I don’t think there is a time I can look out of windows front or back without seeing dozens flying or feeding! Love them!! BUT, when I first came to live here had a big timber bird feeding ‘station built into my back garden at a cost I would rather not remember. Well, all the small and beautiful visited in their hundreds for the seed – it took the cockies just 9 months to eat the ‘house’ itself! It was an angry standoff twixt us for quite awhile ;) !
Eha, I’ve heard they can do serious damage to outdoor furniture and structures!
We used to have about six to eight of them that used to visit our balcony in Mosman. I think it was because the water was so close. There was one sad looking one that had lost most of its feathers. They used to pick on him! :(
Sadly, there’s always one in the flock who gets picked on!
Beautiful photos Celia. Is that your chicken dome the last one is sitting on?
Jo, it’s a chook dome frame, but it never got covered in wire. We had grandiose plans of having two domes, but it never happened, so the frame now gets used for growing tomatoes and snake beans on! :)
I too have grandiose unfiilled plans for my garden. Most of them include actually growing something!
We don’t get too many cockies landing, but plenty fly over, as we live next to bushland. But we do have trees full of rosellas and king parrots, which is fantastic.
I watched two cockies land on the windows of our third floor building today, with no ledge, and try to eat the silicone between the windows! They eat anything!
Little ratbags! You NEED the silicone seals on your windows, that’s what’s holding the glass in! :)
When I was back packing up the East Coast many years ago I remember seeing my first cockees and for a English city girl it was a magnificent and exotic sight and one that has always stayed with me.
Nancy, we get so blase about them because we’ve all grown up with them, that I sometimes forget how stunning they must look to fresh eyes!
I love them. I think they are gorgeous.
They ARE gorgeous! Just hard on the garden though.. :)
They look cute and so do your pictures but early in the morning I often think…..”if I had a gun….”
I’m sure we’ve all thought that.. :)
They are fabulous and your photos really show their character and their bold nature. English birdbooks have this lovely expression for when a bird appears friendly towards people, they refer to the bird as having a ‘confiding’ nature. It always makes me laugh, as if they are implying the bird is about to tell you a secret :) The birds in your photos look like they are bursting to tell all ! Thank you so much for sharing them with your oversea chums, they are a delight, though I can see how they would be a big nuisance if they were regular visitors or in a large flock ! xx
That did make me laugh – I’m not sure he’s trying to confide in me as much as sell me a used car! :)
Cockatoo’s are delightful, and make themselves quite at home until they have finished eating said home. Fantastic pics :)
Hahaha…that’s it exactly! House guests who stay until there’s nothing left to eat! :)
We have turkeys in our backyard…I think your cockatoos are much cuter. I can understand why Pete wouldn’t want them hanging around for lunch.
Karen, are you allowed to eat the turkeys? Over here, some areas have real problems with bush turkeys, but they’re a protected species, so no-one’s allowed to do anything about them!
Yes, there are two hunting seasons during the year. One is bow and arrow and the other with a shot gun. They used to be protected here in New Hampshire but they have multiplied so much that about seven years ago they started allowing hunting. I’ve counted as many as 50 at one time wandering through our orchard. Unfortunately, they are tearing up large areas of grass and I can’t reseed because they eat the seed. :(
See Karen, that would drive me nuts. I hope they’re delicious! ;-)
Dear Celia,
Winter is setting in and I think the quicker you devise a good roast or slow-cook recipe for exotic poultry, you might see these cockatoos in a different light and welcome them to your garden.
They’re a protected species! :)
I remember sitting in a park in Sydney and all these exotic (to me, at least!) green birds flew over – I was amazed :)
Tanya, we have some amazingly colourful birds here! Mostly parrot species, and most of them fairly content in urban areas!
I love cocky’s they are SO expressive (usually loudly ;) ). You really wouldn’t want to live close to a flock of these babies when they first wake up in the morning. As someone who has lived inland in the wheat-belt in W.A. believe me these little guys can wreak a HUGE lot of havoc. They can eat tennis courts and electrical wiring and roofs in their desire to chew. Pretty birds but thank goodness there aren’t all that many of them here in Tassie (but their numbers are growing…)
Fran, I didn’t know they could eat tennis courts and wiring! That really does make them expensive pests!
They are known to eat roof tiles (the recycled types) and anything that is wooden is fair game. When I lived inland they were considered pests by the farmers who used to poison them. I wasn’t from inland so never saw them as such and thought that the farmers should learn to live with them but they did tear up and steal most of the tennis court in one small country town that I lived in so you can only begin to imagine how miffed they were ;)
I love these birds. They look like they are full of character. When we lived in Clareville, black cockatoos used to visit our home. They’re very rare and I haven’t seen them anywhere since xx
Charlie, I saw black cockatoos for the first time ever the other day!
I love them but then again, they’re not making a mess of my crops.
Yes, that’s what it comes down to, I guess.. :)
Used to love them, then I started growing herbs and veggies and the pests woyld just destroy the plants! They wouldn’t even eat them, they just liked to snap off branches from our lemon tree or parsley and then chuck it on the floor! So yeah needless to say we’re not friends anymore
Lisa, the problem too is that they’re so hard to scare away, they have almost no fear of humans!
Love the silky blend of colours with his white body and yellow crest. Great photos!
Julie
Gourmet Getaways
Thanks Julie! They’re really a very beautiful bird…
I love them – the parrot family has true intelligence. Don’t underestimate them!
Oh no-one here does that! It’s more a case of trying to outsmart them – they seem to know they’re a protected species! :)
I love them too but a flock of 500 of them can be so loud you want to scream. My inlaws used to live on a property in Victoria and I was gobsmacked by the sound. They’re really cute though.
500! Just three of them was enough of a noise for me! :)
when you said Pete shooed them away I was wondering why – decimating the wooden furniture sounds a reasonable reason to me! Lovely photos!
Claire, they can be brutal! Some folks have their entire wooden decks destroyed by them!
Well, I understand you not wanting them chewing their way through your wonderful garden & certainly NOT eating any furniture but they are such a beautiful bird. I still think you live in the Garden of Eden there with your lovely wildlife.
They are certainly gorgeous indeed- but from a distance! They also love ripping and stripping Christmas lights, just for fun, and can shred a whole rooftop in a day or two xox