Today I was busily weeding the garden when a Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, and a couple of its mates, flew over my head, screeching.
1/1250, f/7.1, ISO 250, handheld
Canon 5DSR, Canon 200-400 L IS USM EXT
They landed on a young apricot tree where the fruit is just starting to develop. The fruit from this tree is absolutely delicious and I’m usually happy to share it with the rosellas, lorikeets and cockies.
1/1250, f/7.1, ISO 250, handheld
Canon 5DSR, Canon 200-400 L IS USM EXT
The scallywag picked a developing fruit, hard, small and green. It tested it, spat it out and flew away! If they keep testing them there won’t be any left to ripen. I threw out all my nets a few years ago as they were dangerous to wildlife and thought all was going okay to share the fruit but I’m thinking I’d better get some bird-safe nets or give up on apricots this year.
1/1250, f/7.1, ISO 250, handheld
Canon 5DSR, Canon 200-400 L IS USM EXT
The sun was still pretty high which isn’t great for photography and made it a challenge to ensure I had detail in the white of the cockie’s feathers. The background is distant trees that are about 50 metres or so away. They were mostly in shadow from some very large eucalypts.
1/1600, f/7.1, ISO 400, handheld
Canon 5DSR, Canon 200-400 L IS USM EXT
The cockie kept its beady eye on me as it nibbled.
It was lovely to have weather that was nice enough to work in the garden. I was delighted to see so many skinks as I worked. And, unlike Monday’s weeding, I didn’t manage to be stung by a bee in the palm of my hand and stab my own lip with the stinger!
Happy birding, Kim
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Lovely photos. I’ve found Cockatoos to be quite destructive when they want to be and since we put in a small orchard of dwarf fruit trees when we moved here, we decided that a more permanent solution was in order to keep our apricots, plums, peaches, and apples.
My husband has built a high ‘cage’ over the trees which doesn’t do a lot for the aesthetics of the garden but keeps the samplers out. His idea initially was to remove the cage after fruiting each year but having done it and replaced it again this year with quite a deal of difficulty, he has decided to make it permanent. It’s a shame but if we want to keep our fruit, we have to do it.
Last year we had a bumper crop from our 2 passionfruit vines and found we were sharing with rats. We will not use poisons so as not to affect any predator birds that might ingest the rats so simply had to try to pick our fruit quickly. Needless to say, the rats had a good feed as the vines were so thick that they could easily hide among them.
BTW, when we put up the cage we also placed our wildlife camera up on top and found that, although we had never seen possums here, there were a few who came to try to reach the fruit without success so it turned out that the cage saved our fruit from both the birds and the possums, not to mention the rats!
Your ‘fruit cage’ sounds absolutely astoundingly brilliant. I’ve never minded sharing produce with the wildlife but seeing the cockie taking (and discarding) the apricots when they are like hard green marbles is a bit disappointing, such a waste! Scallywags. It’s good that there were plenty of passionfruit to go around. I should get another wildlife camera set up, though I always find it hard to know where to put them. Your place sounds pretty fabulous Kim, thanks for telling me about it.
I am very familiar with those particular ‘samplers’. I hope that you and the other birds get at least some ripe fruits. Our mulberry trees are laden with fruit at the moment. All unripe, but I am looking forward to seeing which of our avian visitors finds them first. I don’t begrudge them the fruit, but do wish they would find non staining places to excrete afterwards.
I hear you with the staining poop! When I was living in Darwin the fruit bats would swarm out from the mangroves, a magnificent sight, but I only once left the laundry on the line overnight.
Gorgeous pics of a cheeky cockie! I think they’re such marvellous birds and love watching them eat holding the food in their hand 🙂
A real scallywag. Did you know they’re nearly all left-footed/handed? I wrote about it a while ago. Pretty interesting!
Hi Kim, love your Cocky photos! It would be nice if they ate the whole fruit and didn’t sample each and every one, eh Kim! I don’t have any fruit trees yet but can just imagine the turmoil. My neighbour over the fence had a magnificent Mulberry bush which attracted the Eastern Koels, Figbirds and about 4 Channel-billed Cuckoos so I didn’t need to leave home for photos. Don’t know how I looked on my back verandah pointing the long lens at his backyard. lol. He’s a truckdriver and has all the curtains closed along the back upstairs. Well, long story short, I looked out the back after returning home and found that he had hacked the whole bush and the birds were all disorientated and were whizzing through to land on it but there was only a ball right up the top. They kept going between the 2 houses. A bit of a ‘what the heck’ moment for them. Two Channel bills came back and landed right on top which might I add was right outside his bedroom and did they give him some. I stood on my deck and cheered them on silently of course. Am I bad? I was so upset for them. All those beautiful berries all over the ground. All those birds have now moved on for greener pastures or should I say another tree laden with fruit. And me?…well I’m back walking around searching for some birds. xx
I don’t think there will be enough left to sample when they get close to being ripe, they’re like little green rocks at the moment. Oh my goodness, what a shame! I will never understand why people chop down trees and bushes while they’re being used. Along our street someone has ripped out about 80 metres of native plants that were along their fence line, in spring, when birds are nesting. I almost cried in public. It would have been absolutely amazing to have all those species so close, Margaret. I wonder if he thought you were photographing him! But that doesn’t make sense, unless he took the mulberry bush out so you’d get a better view…