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The pictured female Forest red-tailed black cockatoo was a very relaxed individual.
Three other red-tails had also been dining on the relevant small, but fruit-laden “Cape Lilac”, but they fled when pedestrian traffic increased.
However, homeward-bound students from Bob Hawke High walking or cycling, directly below “her” tree – and some codger with a camera – did not bother this post’s heroine.
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In front, above, is a female red-tail.
Behind her is a male.
At the relevant time and place – 11.11 am on 01 May, in a so-called Cape Lilac tree, growing in a West Leederville lane – they were two of five red-tails, enthusiastically feasting on the same tree.
Debris was “raining” down, temporarily “greening” the asphalt.
One oft-evident aspect of same-species’ bird behaviour was conspicuously absent…as is very often the case with all three of southwestern Western Australia’s black cockatoos.
(equally magnificent, and also endangered, the other two are “our” planet’s only white-tailed black cockatoos)
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Unmistakably, the pictured individual is an adult male Forest red-tailed black cockatoo.
The tree he is trashing (but fear not: in the longer run, the apparently “ravaged” tree will in fact be all the healthier for the cockatoos’ efforts) is less than one minute’s walk from where I am currently sitting, at home.
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You may be less than surprised to know that this post’s image is not the photo that I had envisaged/intended!
Once a bird is airborne, one fiftieth of one second can prove a surprisingly long time – long enough to transition from “look at that bird!” to “nothing to see but sky”.
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As you can see, the head of the male of this subspecies is – beak excepted – a study in “basic black”.
And, as you will see in following posts, even if the flash of an individual’s tail – or part of his/her chest – is all you can see, it is very easy to identify an adult red-tail’s gender.
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This post’s photo was taken just one lane away from yesterday’s featured image.
As was also true yesterday, the individual you are looking at is definitely a female Forest-red-tailed black cockatoo.
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Pictured above is a small part of an artwork which occupies the entire lane-facing side on one West Leederville residence’s back fence.
It is a lovely, loving salute to/depiction of Calyptorhynchus banksii naso – the Forest red-tailed black cockatoo.
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Many birds can swivel their heads across a much greater arc than we humans can.
This is good news for bird photographers; a “from behind” image does not always lack the relevant bird’s watchful gaze…
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Long before Europeans reached Australia, what is now “Perth’s Pelican Point” was already a place of considerable significance to both humans and birds.
Given its inner urban location – as a bird flies, a couple of minutes or less from the CBD of a metropolis – it is no small achievement that the bipeds who effectively “own” Pelican Point’s actual point are avian, not human.
In the featured image: white-headed stilts, black swans, and a little pied cormorant.
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As you can see, on 18 April 2023, Perth and its big estuary – the Swan River – were bathed in bright sunlight.
It was a perfect day to enjoy good things which are not so readily available – all, within just part of a single day – to most urban humans.
Where else would convenient, uncommonly cheap public transport (free, to “seniors”, outside “rush” hours) deliver you to one of Australia’s better pub lunches, after which the nearby riverside presents you with kilometres of glorious, publicly-accessible, uncrowded foreshore?
Even if you simply zip down to-fro the nearby jetty, you will enjoy a splendid vista and – almost certainly – a close encounter of the pelican kind.
And if you bother to walk along the foreshore….
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