“What are you up to?” I do talk to birds when they approach me, partly to make us both feel comfortable. (The gate was one of those that the authorities use to close the park when the danger of bush fires is critical.) I turned around again, to discover that the brush-turkey had landed on a gate less than two metres away from me. The kerfuffle turned into a whoosh of large wings, followed by a downdraft of air and the sound of claws on metal. Brush-turkeys seem to specialize in making a fuss about nothing. “Ah, just a brush-turkey,” I thought, and turned back to the cockatoos. I saw an Australian Brush-turkey flapping around among the trees a few metres away from me. I heard it too, and turned to look when I stopped filming. If you listen carefully in the first half of the above video, you’ll hear a bit of a kerfuffle in the background. Location: Manly Dam Park, near Sydney: 33☄6’55.0″S 151☁5’10.1″E A tale of a Brush-turkey and an Australian Raven That background noise leads into the story below! Hint: At the start of the video you can hear a bit of thrashing around in the undergrowth. Here’s another video of two of the birds, this time featuring the female. Video featuring the female Glossy Black-Cockatoo Poor bird, I hope the condition isn’t causing it too much discomfort. But even from the long distance, I did think that the bird looked duller and more skeletal than the other two. The birds were quite a distance away, and I was using my camera’s super zoom to photograph them. I didn’t notice the hole above the bird’s beak until I got the pictures home and put them on a big screen. It may be Psittacine beak and feather disease, or some sort of cancer, or maybe the result of a fight or accident? One of the three cockatoos has an illness which has affected its beak. Unwell Glossy Black-Cockatoo – b eak and feather disease? Definitely a moment for oohing and aahing. It’s a treat to see these unusual, gorgeous birds. You can also see a few of the tree’s tiny red flowers: The bird is holding a Casuarina seed pod. The feathers around its head and neck are quite brown in comparison to the darker black feathers on the rest of its body. Next comes a solo shot of the second of the three birds. Evidently the name Casuarina is derived from cassowary (a big bird) because the branches look like cassowary feathers. Casuarinas, also called sheoaks or she-oaks, are a group of trees and shrubs native to Australia and other Asian countries. This choosiness puts the birds at risk when the tree coverage is depleted by land clearance or bush fires. Glossy Black-Cockatoos depend on Casuarina seeds for their food. This one has a lot of yellow around its head, which means it’s probably a female: This munching and muttering is typical of the birds’ behaviour.īelow is a solo shot of the first of the three birds. About half way through the video (at around 50-53 seconds on the timeline) the birds mutter to each other in low-pitched raspy calls. In the video below, the birds are munching happily on Casuarina seed pods. The one on the right is, I think, a male. I think the bird on the left is a female, as she has a lot of yellow around her head. The feather arrangement around the glossies’ necks and the general setting of their heads make me think of a lion: They’re quite different in appearance from the more common Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoos. This picture shows two of the Glossy Black-Cockatoos. Read the story below! First, the glossies While I was watching the cockatoos, a couple of other characters appeared and contributed to the encounter. Luckily there was no-one around to hear, and the birds ignored me! When I noticed them, I stopped walking and said “ooh” out loud. These large cockatoos are not a very common sight. Two days ago, I encountered a group of three Glossy Black-Cockatoos on a Casuarina tree.
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