I felt like Moses parting the Red Sea, an ocean of sulphur-crested cockatoos dividing in front of me so I could walk between the birds.
It was not a new occurrence, my Biblical moment when Moses led the Jews out of Egypt. It happens every winter on the embankments of the twin reservoirs at the Waterworks Reserve after the cockies have arrived in autumn to establish winter territories.
If the arrival of the welcome swallows in the first weekend of September is my harbinger of spring, the raucous screech of the cockies in late March signals long and cold nights of an imminent winter.
Each year, though, the cockatoos seem to arrive in greater number from the upper Derwent Valley where they breed and feed on summer crops.
They no doubt prove a nuisance to farmers and they also prove a nuisance in the suburbs of Hobart, raiding apple trees and, worse, attacking the wooden fabric of homes. The latter is a practice to keep those long and powerful, ever-growing beaks in trim but it can cause immense damage to homes.
I remember receiving a call from an exasperated resident of South Hobart who was at a loss to stop cockatoo attacks on the home she was looking after for her son. The cockies were “eating” the wooden eaves and she had approached the parks and wildlife departments of both Tasmania and New South Wales – where sulphur-crested cockatoos are more common in urban areas – to find a solution, without success. All I could suggest was she cover the eaves with wire mesh.
The arrival of the cockies this year reminded me of a news item a few years back about a plague of a closely-related species, the long-billed corella, invading Melbourne and being equally destructive. The corellas are not native to Melbourne and it was believed the population increase was the result of caged corellas being released.
It appears a plan by the Victorian government to reduce wild populations by allowing the trapping of corellas had backfired. The corellas with their loud squawking had proved unsuitable as pets and been set free.
The long-billed corella and another, the little corella, have also been introduced to Tasmania and can be found in some suburbs. As far as towns and cities are concerned, they have not reached plague proportions, although they might be a problem on farms.
It proves it is foolish to mess with nature and introduce flora and fauna where it does not belong.
The term “invader” cannot be applied to Tasmania’s sulphur-crested cockatoos, though. They happily coexisted with the Aboriginal peoples for thousands of years and with the arrival of the European settlers they were happy – as root, nut and fruit eaters – to take advantage of the transformation of the Tasmanian bush into field and paddock. And to chew on the roofs of suburban houses.