Peeble Wars! Cockies Versus Crows!
May 10th 2007 10:11
A new sReport form the PEEBLE Wars! Cockies versus Crows!
I'm interrupting the announced poetry schedule for a "news" report.
A couple of mornings ago I was nearly late for the train cos of an interesting ornithological event involving the local corvid clan and the cockatoo gang!
The Hornsby area has a flock to 20 to 30 sulphur crested cockatoos. One of the spectacles if you live on an upper floor unit is seeing them gather on rooftops some mornings to pick up the peebles that are supposedly to hold down the outer layer of the insulation.
A whole mob of large white feathered birds with sulphur yellow crests casually strutting acroos the roof tops pausing now and then to find the perfect peeble to swallow to use as an internal grinding stone. The pencil pines on the vacant lot on the corner where the garage was are starting to develop cones and the cockies love to eat them but need the peebles to grind up the seeds.
However we also have a large clan of corvids rather genteel green eyed ravens who also live in the area and seem to roost somewhere on the Barker campus. They visit the roof top for peebles sometimes too! normallly there's only about 5 or 7 of them.
They gather and watch the cockies from a distance carefully avoiding them seemingly snobbing them as the delingquensts they are indeed! The cockies damge plants. The crows or ravens like their cousins the magpies make themselves useful and eat insects.
The crows apparently invited all their relatives around for a feast of peebles. Instead of three or four or five corivds there was nearly twenty! But oh dear the cocokatoos flew in at the same time. There was no actual violence but there was what I can only describe can a quiet war involving glaring and fluttering wings and raised crests and cockatoos and crows sidling up to each other daring the other bird to chase them away.
The cockatoo clan outnumbered the crows but the crows stood bravely their ground and refused to pushed way by the noisy nasty cockatoos!
I wish I had a video or a telephot lens so I could show you all pictures and hope these words give you some images?
I'm interrupting the announced poetry schedule for a "news" report.
A couple of mornings ago I was nearly late for the train cos of an interesting ornithological event involving the local corvid clan and the cockatoo gang!
The Hornsby area has a flock to 20 to 30 sulphur crested cockatoos. One of the spectacles if you live on an upper floor unit is seeing them gather on rooftops some mornings to pick up the peebles that are supposedly to hold down the outer layer of the insulation.
A whole mob of large white feathered birds with sulphur yellow crests casually strutting acroos the roof tops pausing now and then to find the perfect peeble to swallow to use as an internal grinding stone. The pencil pines on the vacant lot on the corner where the garage was are starting to develop cones and the cockies love to eat them but need the peebles to grind up the seeds.
However we also have a large clan of corvids rather genteel green eyed ravens who also live in the area and seem to roost somewhere on the Barker campus. They visit the roof top for peebles sometimes too! normallly there's only about 5 or 7 of them.
They gather and watch the cockies from a distance carefully avoiding them seemingly snobbing them as the delingquensts they are indeed! The cockies damge plants. The crows or ravens like their cousins the magpies make themselves useful and eat insects.
The crows apparently invited all their relatives around for a feast of peebles. Instead of three or four or five corivds there was nearly twenty! But oh dear the cocokatoos flew in at the same time. There was no actual violence but there was what I can only describe can a quiet war involving glaring and fluttering wings and raised crests and cockatoos and crows sidling up to each other daring the other bird to chase them away.
The cockatoo clan outnumbered the crows but the crows stood bravely their ground and refused to pushed way by the noisy nasty cockatoos!
I wish I had a video or a telephot lens so I could show you all pictures and hope these words give you some images?
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