I have a love-hate relationship with cockies — that’s sulphur-crested cockatoos, to you. The birds are an Aussie icon. So ubiquitous that graziers are commonly called “cockies” in this wide, brown land. The sobriquet supposedly emerged because, in the squatter days, farmers would crowd around a waterhole like said birds.
But cockies terrify me.
Have you ever sat near a junkie in a public place, or on public transport? Then you’ll know the feeling of when, out of all the commuters furiously pretending to read their papers, the junkie fixes its gaze on you. That beady, glassy-eyed stare. It transfixes you — and its owner moves in. “Got 20c fer me bus fare to George Town, mate?” (Substitute Hamilton, for NZ readers.)
A friend of mine had a cockie, and I swear the bastard knew how terrified I was. I had to put my feet up all the time, or it’d zero on my boots and start tearing chunks out of the sole with that bolt-cutter beak. That terrifying bolt-cutter beak. This bird could reduce a cuttlefish to powder in just minutes.
But I also kind of admire cockies, because they’re such bastards. They’re deliberately, wantonly destructive. Like a teenager drawing dicks on everything, you can’t help but laugh at it.
I’ve seen a cocky strut along the branches of my beautifully-flowering apple tree, and casually nip off the flowers and toss them on the ground. Not to eat, just for the fun of destroying something. People in their sea-change retreats have lost entire western red cedar balconies because cockies just love tearing them to pieces for fun.
But a cocky in Melbourne’s CBD is going one better than even that.
Footage of a cockatoo dropping pot plants from an apartment balcony in Melbourne has one expert labelling it “bizarre and fascinating” behaviour.
The video, believed to be filmed on Monday morning, shows a sulphur-crested cockatoo dropping pot plants on Flinders Lane.
The best part about it is watching the bird peering over the balcony, observing the effects of its vandalism. Before moving on to the next target.
Cafe manager Lucie Amulet said the video did not surprise her.
She has worked at Croque Monsieur and Roule Galette on Flinders Lane since 2016, and said the birds normally got up to mischief at this time of year.
“It happens every year. They mostly drop plants but also socks as well,” she said […]
Jason, who lives in the Flinders Lane apartment building filmed in the video, said the plants on his balcony had been pulled off by a cockatoo twice.
“It started happening during lockdown. I think it is quirky and funny,” he said.
“There is nothing you can do about it. At the end of the day it is nature.”
Which is an interesting observation — because the heart of Melbourne is about as far from nature as you can get. For decades, the only wildlife you’d see around there would be imports like starlings or sparrows. Yet now, not only are there cockies in Flinders Lane, but falcons nesting on skyscrapers in Collins Street.
Which makes me laugh at the finger-waggers who tell people not to feed the birds, because it’s not “natural”. The whole city isn’t “natural”. What “natural foods” is a cocky going to find in Flinders Lane? If human feeding encourages Australian wildlife instead of imported vermin — go for it.
Which brings us to “experts”.
Western Sydney University animal ecology lab researcher John Martin, who specialises in urban bird behaviour, said he and his team had not seen this sort of behaviour from cockatoos before.
I have to wonder if this “expert” has ever actually spent time around real cockies in his life, that he’s surprised at such behaviour. That sort of willful vandalism is what cockies do.
While he was not sure why a cockatoo might behave like this, he suspected it was to do with food, or was simply part of their playful nature.
“We are certainly familiar with cockatoos knocking on windows to get fed, so it could be associated with someone feeding it,” Dr Martin said.
“Or this bird might have thought this was fun – but we don’t know exactly what they are thinking.
“We see them swinging around on powerlines and having a laugh, and the human interpretation is there is an element of play.”
ABC Australia
Which should hardly be surprising: cockatoos have big brains, with the neuron density equal to a chimpanzee in their forebrain (the part of the brain associated with problem solving). In fact, cockies are better at problem-solving than chimpanzees.
As a great many wheelie-bin owners have discovered.
It turns out that I’m not the only one to liken cockies to teenage vandals. According to emeritus professor Gisela Kaplan at the University of New England, cockies “Like to play, and they’re also incredibly persistent. Once they have made up their mind about something, they will not give up.” Much of their destructiveness is a boredom mechanism.
Without the forest environment and ability to be proper wild-living birds, she said, “it’s like telling 13- to 15-year-old boys ‘we don’t want you at home and we don’t want you in school.’
“What do you think they’ll do?”
ABC Australia
Having once been a 15 year old boy, my sympathies are with the cockies. Throw those bloody pots all you like, big fella.
