Visitors

Just on dusk I could hear some raucousness out in the back yard. I can see out the back door from the lounge room and I spied a cockatoo sitting on a branch.  Unusual, but I have seen cockatoos around here before.  But the one bird that I could spy didn’t explain the amount of noise that was being made.  I got up to have a look and there was a whole flock of them.  Is flock the correct collective noun for cockatoos?  I can’t find one that seems right, although a crackle of cockatoos seems appropriate.  (Also listed: a migraine of lorikeets which is also very appropriate).

Anyway, there were about 10 of them altogether. I couldn’t get them all in a pic, but here’s a trio:

(not seen:  two fat house cats sitting under the washing line plotting how to get the birdies to come to them)

I watched them for a while and one flew down to the tangle of trees near our paw paw trees.  There is a passion fruit vine running rampant through there.  He searched through a tangly bit and popped out with a green passion fruit in his beak.  I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.  He sat there and opened it, and then took it up to a higher branch to eat.  The neighbors will soon have their own vine courtesy of the cockatoo – he dropped the remains in their yard.