He Looks Just Like Elvis Tall, strong and with a huge coif of black jutting out over his forehead, he looked just like Elvis. His broad shoulders and slender hips give him balance and style; his garb was all black with an occasional flash of brilliant red, lining his coattails. He kept close company with his partner, and their new offspring was the apple of his eye, although his partner seemed to be showing her age with her speckles of white. When I got closer, I gasped at his elegance and her speckles were actually yellow. Indeed, they were not alone, for there were nine red-tailed black cockatoos in the trees beside my house. From the ground, it was easy to tell father and mother apart when they flew from tree to tree his tail feathers with solid red blocks of colour underneath, hers more feminine with dappled stripes of orange-red and black. Moreover, she was not going grey with age, after all. These cockatoos live to be seventy years old and more. Her face, crest, shoulders and underbelly were all dappled with yellow specks, the badges of her role as the primary care-giver. It was not so easy to tell if the baby was male or female, because both sexes have barred tails for several years before the distinctive solid red, male colour is evident. I was delighted because we saw them so infrequently. My Dad did not share my admiration. He was forever complaining about the 1 Lesley Dewar Stories My Nana Tells 2009- current http://storiesmynanatells.com
mess left behind every time Elvis and his friends called by, but it was a small price to pay for such exciting company. Unlike their white tailed cousins, who lark about dropping big marri nuts on the top of Burt s cage just for fun, the red-tails are serious feeders and dined well from marri and jarrah eucalyptus, she-oak and snotty gobble trees on my block. Huge beaks snip off the outer branches laden with nuts and they draw the caches of fresh seed to their probing tongues. The distinct sound of their eating brought me under their trees a shower of projectiles sent me away to a safer distance. The word Eucalyptus comes from the Greek language. Eu means well and kalyptos means covered, which refers to the cap that covers the flower bud. It is shed when the flower is ready to open. I wondered where they were nesting, this doting pair with their splaw-footed youngster, because they usually return to the same nest every second year. They only breed every alternate year and will one baby each time; it is very difficult to build up their numbers. They would be nesting in a large old and decaying tree that began growing long before Captain Stirling sailed up the Swan River from Fremantle to Perth, in 1827, because hollows suitable for black cockatoos do not begin to appear in eucalypts (gum trees) until they are around 230 years old. It s estimated that some of these veteran and stag trees are between 300-500 years old and are critical for the long-term survival of our cockatoos in Australia. 2 Lesley Dewar Stories My Nana Tells 2009- current http://storiesmynanatells.com
The nine birds were a small flock of three families each being a mother, a father and a baby. In mid-september, these youngsters were early hatchlings, because most Cockatoos breed every second year and a recent study found that slightly more Red-tails are breeding in winter than summer. Their nest in the hollows of a marri, jarrah or karri tree, lined with woodchips, will hold one egg (sometimes two but only one hatchling ever survives). After 29 days or so the diligent parents, who mate for life and reach sexual maturity between four years and seven years, get their reward of an almost bald baby sparsely covered with yellow fluffy down, before its feathers grow. Mother alone will brood the egg, while father forages in the surrounding bush and returns to feed the female and young in the evening. The mother is fully dependent upon the father bird for food, while she is hatching the egg and for the next couple of weeks after it hatches, both mother and baby are reliant upon the father bird for food. It is a tragedy for them if any accident should befall the father. It will be three months before the chick is in full fledge and leaves the nest on its awkward first flight. If pink and grey galah babies are called squawkers, then redtailed black cockatoo babies are whingers. For three hours, this juvenile did little else but sit and whinge for attention with both parents close by, but being busy feeding themselves. I laughed when, after several hours, I discovered that the three fathers in the small flock had moved to a large tree fifty yards away and left the mothers to take care of the children. Every father needs to get away from his whingeing kid for a while, with his mates! What do father cockatoos talk about on a sunny Saturday afternoon in the last weeks of the Australian Football League finals probably the West Coast Eagles! On the 3 Lesley Dewar Stories My Nana Tells 2009- current http://storiesmynanatells.com
other hand, maybe they talk about the Hawthorn Hawks! What a racket! At 3:00 in the afternoon, all three Dads started feeding the babies and the gum trees were being thrashed about with big black wings, red tails and mothers trying to get out of the way. It is very rare to see a group of father Red Tail Cockatoos feeding their babies at the same time, in the same tree. They usually pair off with the mother birds. Two years later, it was even better. For a week, we had enjoyed the company of a bigger flock, about twenty Forest Red- Tailed Black Cockatoos. (Calyptorhynchus banksii naso) They decided our trees were a good place to rest, relax and feed their babies without leaving. They didn t seem to bother the kangaroos, who came right into our back garden. Since the white tailed cockatoos were usually more prolific, noisy, and seen more often, it was a real pleasure to enjoy the presence of the less abundant red-tailed cockatoos for six or seven days. Our house was soon surrounded with the litter of gum leaves and small branches. I reminded my whingeing Dad that if Elvis s families did not harvest their food crops each year, trees 4 Lesley Dewar Stories My Nana Tells 2009- current http://storiesmynanatells.com
that are top heavy with gumnuts would surely have toppled over and crashed into our house many years before. They were doing us a great service, harvesting all those gum nuts. On the weekend, gum nuts dropping on the shed roof provided a musical backdrop for a Sunday afternoon of weeding, gardening and bird watching. The soft screech of young birds, inter-mingled with reassuring mutters from their mothers was a joy to hear, as was their distinctive karrak as they moved from treetop to treetop. Several pots of gerbera in full spring bloom in my back garden - were neatly beheaded and the flowers devoured. In one water garden bowl, three water lily flower buds were bobbing just under the surface of the water, before they opened their delicate pink and white petals. It was very funny to see the ungainly young birds balancing on the edges of the water bowl, threatening to fall face first into the water as they nipped off the buds. Their loss was a small price to pay for the company of these wonderful, red-tailed birds. One of the most surprising aspects of these gentle giants is their silence when they wanted to be quiet. A mother and child sat in one tree for about five hours, quietly eating, grooming each other and nuzzling with only the occasional twirling descent of a gum leaf to suggest their presence. Gentle calls from tree to tree kept the flock in touch while a soft Sunday afternoon was barely disturbed. Through the binoculars, it was easy to distinguish the males with their glossy black heads; the yellow speckles of the females and the pale red-orange on the tails of young birds. I have idled away many an afternoon, sitting under a Stoneville gum tree, listening to their gentle karrak as the gumnuts fall like spring rain. 5 Lesley Dewar Stories My Nana Tells 2009- current http://storiesmynanatells.com
These red-tailed cockatoos once were common but because of the destruction of forests, due to farming and clearing the bush close to the city for housing estates, their numbers have largely declined. There was some evidence that they were extending their habitat range, but they are almost entirely dependent now upon the publicly owned forests, particularly State Forest. The red-tail is essentially the cockatoo of the jarrah forests. Marri is a primary food source and they had been recorded as extending their diet to include Cape Lilac berries and the nuts of the spotted gum. About the Cape Lilacs, this is true, because I have photographed them feeding on Cape Lilac berries, in Victoria Park in 2008 and since right in my Mum s backyard. Regrettably, much illegal shooting of (white tailed) Baudin s cockatoos by orchardists still takes place, because they damage apples in orchards, whereas the Forest Red Tailed Black Cockatoo does not. The block on which we were living when I was observing these wonderful birds (in 2006 and 2008) had some old trees but huge stumps bore testimony to the early settler s need for timber: furniture, houses, railway lines and bridges. Because our genuine living needs impact on their habitat, we must make reparation to our Eucalypt forests now, to prepare for the future. 6 Lesley Dewar Stories My Nana Tells 2009- current http://storiesmynanatells.com
Murdoch University s Dr Hugh Finn has been studying the Red-tail, Baudin and Carnaby s Cockatoo at the Boddington Gold Mine (BGM) to understand both breeding and feeding habits of the birds, which have been subject to habitat displacement due to the clearing of areas in the South-West. options. He has some ideas on how we can help all three to be re-established when old mines are rehabilitated, which includes the need to provide good nesting In the hills (along the Darling Range of Perth), we don t provide the primary diet of their wheat belt cousins: the seeds of the Double Gee and other weed seeds, but I wonder how many farmers see them as their friends and will be planting trees that will become nesting sites for 230 years hence The Perth Zoo s website is extremely informative as are some other sites, which are linked to this story for more exploring. http://www.birdsaustralia.com.au/our-projects/carnabys-black-cockatoo-recovery.html http://blackcockatoorecovery.com/release-of-baby-red-tailed-cockatoo.php# http://www.perthzoo.wa.gov.au/animals--plants/australia/cockatoo-row/red-tailed-black- Cockatoo/ 7 Lesley Dewar Stories My Nana Tells 2009- current http://storiesmynanatells.com
Questions about He Looks Just Like Elvis 1. Why did I think the Red Tailed Cockatoo looked just like Elvis?. 2. What colour speckles does the female Red Tailed Cockatoo have? 3. How many families were in the flock of Red Tailed Cockatoos? 4. What did the white tailed cockatoos do with marri nuts? 5. How often do cockatoos breed? 6. How long does it take the baby cockatoo to hatch out of the egg? 7. Why did we need the cockatoos to eat the gum nuts? 8. Are cockatoos always noisy? 9. How many waterlily flowers were there, in the water bowl? What happened to them? 10. What unusual food are red tailed cockatoos eating, now? 11. Why are cockatoos at risk? 12. How long does it take for a Eucalypt to become a nesting tree? 8 Lesley Dewar Stories My Nana Tells 2009- current http://storiesmynanatells.com