Pests on the Wing

I wrote this last night and submitted it for my Gembrook column to Signpost mag June edition.

Pests on the Wing

On a clear afternoon in early May I was enjoying planting out some seedlings at Emerald when a large flock of sulphur-crested cockatoos arrived, flying at height over my head one way, then back the other and all the time screeching to each other as if in argument about where to roost. They settled in tall eucalypts some distance away but the screeching continued. After a while the flock, which must have contained hundreds of birds, dispersed and smaller groups flew about at low altitude landing spasmodically in shrubs and smaller trees close to me, squawking and carrying on menacingly. The noise was irritating and continued all the while I was working, depriving me of peace and quiet, and frankly my work became unpleasant.

‘A Field Guide to Australian Birds’ says of the voice of this cockatoo, “A harsh, raucous screech terminating with a slight upward inflection; also a variety of guttural screeches and shrill squawks.”

These cockatoos are about in far greater numbers now than in previous times. Doug Twaits in his Field Guide to the birds of the Emerald and Gembrook Districts compiled in 1998 said, “Like the Galah, Sulphur-crested Cockatoos in the last 20 years have moved into the Emerald and Gembrook grids in increasing number. Their status has changed from rather rare, in that time, to common, breeding residents.”

Genseric Parker in ‘Forest to Farming – Gembrook: an early history’ in 1995 wrote, “Although this area is not the natural home for the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, several years ago a pair nested in a big tree along the Wallace Creek at the bottom of our property and brought out three young ones. In the following years the same pair has continued to nest.”

They are certainly well established in the area now. They are destructive to fruit crops and can even attack timber in houses at times I’m told. I will have to put up with the dreadful noise.

At least there seems to be fewer rabbits about lately. And there were few flies this summer gone. And the rats and mice did not come into the house with the cold weather like other years. The mozzies were bad, and the European wasps, but the May cold snap knocked them out. We take the good with the bad. Pest populations go up and down, often before we are aware, but I can’t see the cockies leaving.

I was telling Jod about  it today and he said when he was in the fireman job on the railways he and his driver hated seeing flocks of white cockies on the line ahead especially on a bend. They gathered in the thousands sometimes eating the wheat that fell from railway trucks from freight trains. Their beaks were so strong they disturbed the ballast under the rails in their efforts to dig out the seed and therefore the next train was badly shaken by instability and risked derailment unless they slowed down. It was a cause of serious track maintenance.