Great Birding Moments #13 Sulphur Crested Cockatoos
Sulphur Crested Cockatoo
Last week my wife was admitted to Burnside Hospital in suburban Adelaide for an operation. After seeing her into the capable hands of the staff I drove off to spend the day photographing birds in the Cleland Wildlife Park in the Adelaide Hills. Rounding the corner into the next side street I was astounded to see a small flock of about eight Sulphur Crested Cockatoos in a street tree. I just had to stop and get the camera out.
Sulphur Crested Cockatoos
The tree was a White Cedar and a branch had broken off, exposing a hollow. Several birds were investigating the hollow as they screeched and carried on just a few metres from my busy camera. I was very pleased with the result because, in my experience, this is not an easy species to get close to in the wild. They seemed more interested in the hollow and each other than the strange creature hovering below them. Actually, one of them did notice me as the photo I took had him looking straight at me with a quizzical look on his face. Pity it is a little blurred.
Sulphur Crested Cockatoo
Sulphur Crested Cockatoos are found in coastal and sub-coastal regions from northern Australia, down the eastern seaboard and through to Adelaide. It is also found in Tasmania and has been introduced to Western Australia. They are a delightful and spectacular species but are inclined to be rather noisy.
Sulphur Crested Cockatoos are a popular pet in Australia, and probably elsewhere too.
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September 28th, 2006 at 11:27 pm
I love the Great Moments in Birding concept, Trevor. It’s very fitting when you spot cockatoos in the wild.
September 29th, 2006 at 8:35 am
Thanks Mike. They certainnly are spectacular birds, and to see them up so close and to get really great shots of them was a bonus. It lifted my spirits on an otherwise heavy day - I’d just left my wife in a nearby hospital for her second operation in as many months. (She’s OK).
September 29th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
I’m surprised that you say that Sulphur Crested’s are hard to approach, Trevor. There’s a wild flock in the centre of Sydney that live in the botanic garden & domain and its quite easy to wander around watching them dismantling various trees there. You can get quite close if you are careful.
They also use this as a base to invade (!) much of the urban inner city area - some people feed them off their high rise balconies. I lived in Sydney’s inner east until very recently and they have for the last 15 years or more, been a fixture of life in Woolloomooloo. Screeching their heads off and engaging aerobatic flying and tourist harrassment and everything all year long. In the last place I lived, in Potts Point, they used to regularly settle upon the trees in my street and proceed to demolish them for their fruit (which I note the currawongs also ate).
They will also attack human artifacts, such as the one we tried chasing off our neighbor’s window sill after it took a liking to shredding the flyscreen. I guess living in centre of the big city, they are used to humans completely. This one just looked me up and down, calculated that I couldn’t actually physically reach it, and then calmly return to shredding activities.
They also once attacked a big foam spider effigy the museum had stuck on the front to advertise a spider exhibition they had on.
I think they do this sort of stuff for pure entertainment value. They are hooligans and vandals and I love ‘em!
September 29th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
Yes - I am aware that this species is very common in the eastern states and especially in relation to human habitation where they can be very destructive and seemingly unafraid of human activities quite close.
These “urbanised” birds are far less flighty - in my experience - than their rural cousins. In the Adelaide Hills where they are relatively common they can be easily unsettled and will fly off readily. Those I photographed in suburban Burnside were obviously used to co-existing with close human activity.
Thanks for visiting my blog and for your comments.
September 30th, 2006 at 10:53 am
[…] Yesterday I had a comment on an earlier post that made some interesting, informative and entertaining things to say about the behaviour of Sulphur Crested Cockatoos. In part, Scot was questioning my statement that this species was a bit flighty and hard to photograph. With his permission I quote his comments in full. I’m surprised that you say that Sulphur Cresteds are hard to approach, Trevor. There’s a wild flock in the centre of Sydney that live in the botanic garden and it’s quite easy to wander around watching them dismantling various trees there. You can get quite close if you are careful. […]
May 8th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
[…] Great Birding Moments #13 Sulphur Crested Cockatoos (click to view) […]
April 15th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
This comment from Mikael was accidentally removed during an administration problem with spam comments. Sorry it has taken so long to correct this.
Hi,
Im also surprised to know that you think that Sulphur Crested’s are hard to approach. I have been feeding them for over one year now in Lane Cove and nowadays it is on my terms. When Im coming with food they are litteraly flying around me waiting for me to stop walking and start to feed them instead. When I stop they are landing next to me and start eating the food I put on the ground. Having them eating from my hand belongs to the ordinary. Some of them, escpecially one, use to fly (not walking but fly!) onto my arm and start eating from my hand. It is an amazing feeling. Sometimes they get scared of something, dogs etc. and I just wait a few minutes before they start coming back, and I just standing up having food in my right hand put both arms up, and then they land on my left arm. Time by time I had advanced and get more and more one of them. Now, they are almost like my pets. I simply love them!
May 19th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
It’s true, cockatoos are everywhere here. I used to feed wild ones on my balcony and on Sundays there would be 3 flocks coming together, over 80 birds at my last count. But they are very trainable and organised. I’d set two chairs on the balcony with sunflower seeds and they’d form a line and one would wait on one chair while another hopped on my lap for seeds (often by hand, but usually out of a bowl). Hop on, hop off, next up. Very organized flocks. The wild ones here understand “No”, “Off the Clothes Line” and many other things they hear regularly enough. Of the 80 birds, only one did any chewing, & he destroyed 6 screens in 3 hrs. It’s not all the cockatoos, but there are a few mischievous ones. One out of 80 isn’t bad. They’re a treat - entertaining, funny and sweet with a bit of independent mischief to them.
I have a huge aviary on Sydney’s Northern Beaches and exclusively care for birds that have been permanently injured or forsaken by their owners. Trapping wild birds is cruel and any bird that can’t live on its own in the wild should be in a well maintained, huge aviary in a warm climate with other birds for company and things to interest them. Cockatoos are about as intelligent as a 4 year old human, and that’s very smart. They are more conservative and predictable than the Little Corellas, but their bite isn’t as bad, despite the bigger beak. But most owners give them up because they get loud when they want attention. Cockatoos have wonderful memories and often live longer than we do. I’ve heard many stories of cockatoos remembering a child who teased them 20 years later, and the ones I’ve cared for over the years have never forgotten me no matter how much time passes. They are beautiful birds and happiest when they are free.
August 16th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Well I hate ‘em! I live in the bush ay hornsby and they ruin my garden - digging out anything in pots, agressive towards the other birds i feed - rosellas, king parrots and lorrikeets, and are in the process of shredding my timber balcony bit by bit. I was in my garden the other day and one of those asshole birds was in the tree above breaking off branches and hurling them down on me .. im sure it was deliberate. I would do ANYTHING to get rid of them. Such a shame that something so beautiful to look at is such a goddamn destructive pest!
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:12 pm
I can only sympathize with those of you who suffer from the destructive nature of this species of parrot. They are certainly very beautiful - but that only masks a darker side. Their destructive nature is well documented and I’m sorry that I do have any solutions to suggest.
We feel the same way about two other species of parrot. We don’t have the SC Cockatoo here but we do have hundreds of Galahs. Again - a stunningly beautiful bird but so destructive. We planted two almond trees about 20 years ago and I can only recall picking a few handfuls of nuts in all that time. They strip the trees when the fruit is still green - I hope they had a stomach ache after!
The other destructive species is the Mallee Ringneck parrot. These sneak into the pear trees when we are not looking and chew around the stem of the fruit - again, before it is ripe. They are so bold that they often sit there eating no more than a metre away from us.
September 30th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
If you stop leaving food out for birds then we wont bother you. By leaving out food for us, the rest of our day is disrupted because usually we would spent all day looking for food, but if we are well fed by you then we have to do something else to amuse ourselves for the rest of the day, hence destroying trees, gardens etc. Also, you mention that you are feeding lorrikeets, I hope that you are not feeding them sunflower seeds, because they are nectar eaters and long term feeding of seeds in lorikeets will destroy their digestive system which is designed for nectar from flowers or nectar mix which u can buy in most supermarkets. Did I mention that sunflower seeds for a cockatoo is like chocolate to a child!