Red-Tailed Black Cockatoo

The afternoon shift has arrived. The Red-tailed Black Cockatoos. They sweep in looking like burnt charcoal and sunset, magnificent, prehistoric things that seem far too grand for a Thursday.

Then the gossip starts. A rolling, day-long cacophony of creaks and squawks; a noisy congress debating the day's events from the high branches of the red gums.

Down below, things are no more civil. Their Yellow-tailed cousins often join them at the bird baths and water vessels scattered about the farm, a vital source of water in a landscape that gets bone dry over summer.

Their work is one of glorious, inefficient destruction. They select a single gum nut, eat less than half, then with the casual disdain of a rockstar trashing a hotel room, hurl the rest, plus the branch it was attached to, onto my lawn.

It’s a beautiful, pointless, glorious mess. An honest day's work of giving precisely zero damns. You can’t help but admire the sheer audacity of it all.

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All photos posted are copyright Paul Pichugin unless otherwise stated.