Wicked White Birds!

This post is for World Bird Wednesday.

I am always intrigued with accounts from others about their backyard bird feeders with several different foods and seed mixtures to attract birds. It certainly wouldn't work here! All I'd attract would be these Wicked White Birds - a.k.a. Sulphur-crested Cockatoos! There are far too many of them around here for comfort and they are so destructive!
However, if the natural balance of the environment is disturbed you must expect birds to take advantage if they can. Just west of here there are large commercial pine plantations (Slash Pine - Pinus elliotii - not a native!) and the cockatoos definitely like the pine cones. However, they fly over the houses here night and morning and also take advantage of anything they see!
There's a pine tree next door for them to explore. They break off whole branches - not just the cones.
They sit in the tops of my neighbor's palms and chew the new fronds to pieces.
They cling to the electricity wires - when all else fails - and screech and play on them for a while.
What has made me cranky with them at present is that the Passion Fruit vines have a heavy crop on them right now and the Cockatoos sample the fruit. Passion Fruit is a vine that has a round fruit which is sweet and "yummy" when nice and ripe. The fruit is 2-3inches in diameter (50-70mm). The pulp of the fruit can be eaten 'as is' or used for flavoring in fruit salad, or flavoring for icing (frosting) on a cake, or for flavoring in cream for a pavlova - (and here's a recipe for pavlova)
This is the flower.
This is the green fruit almost hidden in the leaves.
This is what the ripe fruit looks like - cut open to eat.
And this is what the Cockatoos do!
I wouldn't mind sharing SOME - but the Cockatoos come down and pick anything they see and try it by making a hole in the side. When it is green and not pleasant to eat they just spit it out on the ground. You come out to find the ground littered with discarded green fruit and not much else left on the vine! So far I am relying on my dog to chase them off before they do too much damage. I have a friend who - in desperation! - has covered some of her fruit with paper bags.
So, blogging friends in North America and Europe - can you imagine how much the cockatoos would LOVE your bird feeders! Not sure how much would be left of the feeder by the time they had finished!

Birds in the Morning

I have just been sitting out on my back veranda enjoying a morning 'cuppa'. The Kestrels flew by and apparently disturbed a number of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos that were in the pine tree next door. One kestrel than proceeded to lead the cockatoos on a little game of chase. It flew just ahead of them swooping around the pine tree out and up and around again with four cockatoos in pursuit. It was definitely NOT flying at normal Kestrel speed but was just keeping a few meters ahead. This continued for just long enough for me to step inside and get the camera and take a few quick photos. Unfortunately, I was not quick enough to get the cockatoos and the kestrel in the same photo. The cockatoos got tired of the game first and settled down in the pine tree again while the kestrel then flew off at a quite different speed. Was this one of the juvenile kestrels having fun? None of the birds seemed distressed at all and the cockies were not even screeching. Nice to have a few bird antics to enliven the morning 'cuppa'.