Yellow Tailed black Cockatoos

Each January and early February we are visited by a mob of raucous black cockatoos which spend a couple of weeks in the area working over the cones that have developed on the slash pines. This is the only saving grace in my opinion for keeping these introduced pine trees on our place (well that and the considerable cost to cut then down).

This year the mob was in excess of 50 birds, and the mob always includes a few youngsters that make a relentless raspy squarking for their parents to feed them. It's hazardous to stand beneath a tree that they are munching their way through as they let the pine cones that they are finished with drop to the ground with gay abandon (so to speak) and you wouldn't want one to hit your head.

Once they finish they fly across to another part of the property or neighbouring properties, usually calling their sombre 'funereal' like call as they do so. I can remember the very first time I saw these birds in the wild, when I was 14 or 15, and it was a grey wintery day, when I was with my mates, Waz and Flip, in the Watagan Mountains, just west of Lake Macquarie. We were walking along an old logging track in dense forest and we heard this strange bird call kind of like babies crying. Before long a small flock of these wonderful birds flew over us and landed in trees quite close. We were also lucky enough to be visited by a couple and their youngster a few years in a row when we lived in inner Newcastle. These birds had discovered the white cedar that grew at the front of the house and they would appear around August to tear open the branches and extract the juicy plump borer larvae that would be inside.  I'm very glad we share our place with them here at Larnook as well.