Yellow-Tailed Black Cockatoos

Today was all types of fabulous, for loads of reasons really but you know those unexpected moments? They’re often the best, and our unexpected moment(s) today consisted of several encounters with a huge flock of YTBCs! I’m an absolute sucker for these birds at the best of times, their eerie call and their slow flight get me right in the feels every single time. But today, the sheer number of these birds and the urgency of their calls which tumbled over and over each other so that they sounded more like Corellas than Cockatoos, was really a sight and a sound to behold.

My ears prick up at the first hint of that distinctive call and I always drop what I’m doing and peer out the window at the very least and more often than not, run camera aloft, out onto the porch or the deck or onto the path so I can catch a glimpse of them. Today we were wandering over the sandstone paths in the Royal National Park trying to stay away from large groups of people and when alone just drinking in the stupid amount of beautiful scenery around us. Oh, and waiting for Copper Tailed Skinks to reappear because neither of us can take a half decent photo of them it would seem. During our wait, I was playing instagram model and Matt was playing Instagram boyfriend which is strange in itself because I rarely post on instagram, am absolutely not model material and I HATE – ABSOLUTELY HATE – having my photo taken. And yet there we were.

We did see a real instagram model and her boyfriend in the wild and there’s an art to it, it has to be said. I caught snippets of, “tilt your head this way”, “okay, now look at the ocean”, “relax, you look amazing” on the wind and it looked like he was doing a bang up job of capturing the moment (if ‘bang up job’ is the good one). I had just started to feel like a big fat insta failure when I heard the birds. And there were loads! YTBCs travel in both large and small flocks, but aside from one time near a pine plantation, I have never seen more than maybe 6 or 7 together and more often I see them in pairs. So when I lifted my face to the sky, hand to my eyes to try and block out the midday sun, I was pretty damn excited as the birds just kept coming and coming and coming with probably hundreds in total!!! They flew over and it was bloody amazing and we watched in awe as they flew into the distance calling the entire time.

Fast forward to an hour or so later and we are back in the car and about to start the relatively quick trip home. And out of nowhere and completely unexpectedly, the Cockatoos are once again over the top of us and they are so loud, I can hear them inside, even with the windows closed and the tyres rumbling on the road. I’ve got to say, most of the roadside in the RNP is not great for pulling over on, with trees and heath and bracken and branches reaching right up to the road itself in a lot of places. Trust me, my eyes are always darting around looking for places in case I see an echidna and need to pull over suddenly to adore it up close. But my manifestation skills were most definitely on point and I found a clearing pretty much straight away, pulling over and quickly working out, as the first dozen or so birds flew over and past us, that I had exactly zero time to grab my camera and instead grabbed my phone to get some video.

At this point we absolutely could not believe our luck. Two encounters with the same massive flock! And so having lost sight (and sound) of them, we decided it was time once again to head home. Now I don’t want to pull out the third time lucky thing, but it was totally third time lucky and only a kilometre or so up the road, having turned the car around we watched as the trees were absolutely pulsing with the constant coming and going of birds!!! And as I’m the luckiest girl in the world we found another spot to quickly pull into and spent another few minutes watching them!

Not quite sure what was behind the huge numbers but the area had been part of a hazard reduction burn off over the previous three days. Possibly they were taking advantage of the fire-weakened branches, making the breaking open and searching for the larvae of wood borer beetles easier or maybe the fire had opened the seed pods of the many banksia trees making them a quick, easy meal. Whatever the reason, it was an encounter (and another encounter and another!) that we’ll never forget!!!