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The Week in Wildlife: All Creatures (are) Great and (Mostly) Small
A lot can happen in seven days
Friday
As I drove back from Atherton, a flock of Red-tailed Black Cockatoos flew across the road towards the paddocks near Wongabel State Forest. There must have been thirty of these magnificent birds, almost floating on languid wing beats. The sky was grey, clotted with rain clouds. The cockatoos were black as shadows and their scarlet and yellow tail feathers like stained glass windows. For most of the year, they prefer the dry country — the open woodland around Mareeba and the western edge of the Tablelands — where they can feed on the seeds of eucalypts and casuarinas, but they were here to raid the maize fields.
Thursday
The Red-tailed Black Cockatoo is one of Australia’s largest parrots, but the Double-eyed Fig-parrot is one of our smallest. Their high-pitched call, an insect-like zit-zit, distracts me from work. They are hard to spot in the fig trees — their leaf green plumage blends in with the foliage and they are tiny enough to hide behind leaves. But with a bit of patience, I’ll spot their mischevious faces peering down at me. Both male…
