Early one morning last week, as the wind whirled and whistled through the gum trees, my attention was drawn to noisy birds. We have many gum trees, several wattle trees, and a few dead gums with their barren grey branches reaching nakedly towards the sky. Usually the dead branches at the very tops of the gum trees are empty, apart from early morning when the red-tailed black cockatoos perch to greet the day. Feathers occasionally drop from their red tails and a hunt in the long grass will offer up a treasure of a feather, distinctive and bright, lying amongst the dry undergrowth.
This particular morning the screeching did not come from the red-tailed black cockatoos; instead the pink and grey galahs had taken over ownership of the dead branches. Poor black cockatoos circled and whirled, eventually settling on different branches several metres away. The two following days saw the same pattern repeated, but this morning the red-tailed black cockatoos had once again resumed ownership of their tree.
