Blue Mountains national park
local wildlife

by Linda
(Australia)

A wild king parrot in the back yard

My own backyard is in the Blue Mountains world heritage national park. Two beautiful white cockatoos have claimed us as their family. Every morning they arrive on the windowsill, squawking for attention.

We have named them Charlie and Crystal. The only way you can tell they are male and female is by the fact they canoodle on the windowsill quite shamelessly. With that established, the female is identified by her feminine looks and personality.

There are also Galahs, various other small parrots, and, our favorites, a family of king parrots (see picture).

Most of these birds become friendly enough to sit on an arm and feed by hand.

It's not wise to do that with a huge cockatoo though. When the food is finished they are likely to take your finger off in frustration.

I've watched a cockatoo snap off a sunflower at the head and fly off with it for breakfast. I've also had an annoyed one tear parts of my garden to shreds just because I didn't feel like feeding him.

That resulted in no for anyone for a few days, until Charlie and Crystal came back looking very apologetic and insisting, by the looks in their eyes, that it really wasn't their fault. I caved in.

In Australia we really have little need to keep birds as pets, though many do. I prefer the fun of attracting and befriending the local parrots.

Sydney

One summer I stayed in a highrise unit overlooking Luna Park on Sydney harbor. A whole flurry of small brightly colored parrots, not much bigger than budgies, joined me for breakfast each morning on the balcony. They sat on my arms, shared my plate and were very amusing.

My reply

Lucky you! I can understand why there is no need to have pet birds, you are having a zoo in your backyard. Wish I had something similar here.

Your garden must suffer a lot because I noticed that about big parrots, you feed them once and they will expect you to care for them forever. Which is not that bad if you don't have a big beautiful garden.

But you thought them a lesson, they definitely need some sort of training and I think you did it perfectly.

About the small birds joining you for breakfast, that is great. Budgies are definitely like that too. When I started letting my budgie parakeet out of the cage he washed his little feet in our soup so many times.

Thank you for sharing this wonderful story with us.