see how parrots become pest...

Cockatoo wars
Quote:
Originally Posted by nioka View Post
Running parallel to the flying fox as a destructice native pest is the white cockatoo.

This week we have been invaded by hordes of these screaming pests. Just their screeching alone is bad enough but the damage they are doing makes them a pest. They chew at the patio rails, they wreck many garden plants and they to top things off they have decimated my pecan tree in a couple of days and completely ruined this years crop.

Most years we expect to lose about 10% of the nuts to the cockatoos but 100% is a bit too much to accept peacefully. So from todat they are officially on my pest list.
Nioka.....Here are a couple of suggestions that might be worth trying to get rid of those cockies.

My sister had trouble with aggressive magpies attacking their own reflections in her glass windows. The constant pecking at the glass just about drove her crazy. One magpie even cracked the glass when he launched himself bodily at his own reflection!

She solved the problem by getting a very realistic cardboard cut-out of a hawk in attack mode. The first rain wiped out the cardboard hawk, made it go all soft and soggy. So they got another one and traced its outline on a piece of galvanised iron, then painted it up in hawk colours.
Now they had a weather-proof hawk. They made up a second hawk as well - now the magpies don't come near the window.
They regularly change the positions of the hawks, and sometimes display only one of them, sometimes two, the idea being to keep the magpies on their guard and stop them from becoming complacent about the hawkes.

Might just be worth a try with those cockies?

Second suggestion.....
Catch one of the cockies and stir him up by flapping him with a sock or something similar. Come to think of it, you'd better use a newspaper instead of a sock - if your socks are anything like mine you'd only cause the cocky to pass out or drop dead!
Have a tape recorder at the ready for when the cocky screeches his distress calls as you flap him. Play the recording through a loud speaker system any time the cockatoos come near - nothing scatters a mob of cockatoos like a distress call from one of their mates.

How to catch a cockatoo? Simple - here's a deion of a trap we used for catching seed-eating birds when I was kid....
Use some light timber to make up a square frame.
Cover the frame with chicken netting.
Put it on the ground near a tree where the cockatoos congregate, so they get used to seeing it.
Use a stick a couple of feet long to prop up one side of the trap.
Tie one end of a thin rope to the stick - the other end of the rope goes to your house or some other location from which you can give it a decent pull.
After the birds get used to seeing the trap, start putting grain on the ground beside it - the birdseed you can buy at supermarkets will do just fine.
Once the birds get used to being fed, gradually put the grain closer to the trap, and finally under the trap itself. When they start feeding under the trap, a simple yank on the rope is enough to drop the trap and snare them.

If you want to get really high-tech, you can put a couple of small doors in the top of the trap to make it easier to remove the birds without them escaping.
Make sure you've got something pretty sturdy on your hands before you put them anywhere near a cockatoo.....those bastards can bite like a wolfhound!

Make sure you're not being observed by anyone like IFocus or Bloveld or any of their greenie mates - you don't want to get dobbed in to the National Parks And Wildlife crowd!


Not sure if either of these suggestions will achieve the desired result - give them a go to find out.
Perhaps so, Julia. But netting a tree or two won't solve all the problems these birds cause.

Cockatoos don't just stop at damaging trees or eating the nuts off them. Nioka has outlined other areas where they're causing damage or being a nuisance.
I've known the buggers to perch on TV antennas in such numbers that the antenna collapsed, but not before the cockatoos made the red roof white with their excrement and chewed hell out of the wiring that ran down from the antenna.
I've seen them damage gardens by using their beaks to dig up lawns in search of grubs. I could name you many other examples of the destructive capacity of these birds.

In the outback areas where I've lived, we solved the problem by shooting hell out of them until they got the message and moved on. Obviously that's not an option if you live in a suburban area.

For all the problems these birds sometimes cause, I still have a soft spot for them and enjoy seeing them around and hearing their calls. Overall they probably do more good than harm, and play an important role in nature. That doesn't mean we shouldn't deal with them though, if they start troubling us.
Fortunately they're not in troublesome numbers where I live.
bunyip is offline

Perhaps so, Julia. But netting a tree or two won't solve all the problems these birds cause.

Cockatoos don't just stop at damaging trees or eating the nuts off them. Nioka has outlined other areas where they're causing damage or being a nuisance.
I've known the buggers to perch on TV antennas in such numbers that the antenna collapsed, but not before the cockatoos made the red roof white with their excrement and chewed hell out of the wiring that ran down from the antenna.
I've seen them damage gardens by using their beaks to dig up lawns in search of grubs. I could name you many other examples of the destructive capacity of these birds.

In the outback areas where I've lived, we solved the problem by shooting hell out of them until they got the message and moved on. Obviously that's not an option if you live in a suburban area.

For all the problems these birds sometimes cause, I still have a soft spot for them and enjoy seeing them around and hearing their calls. Overall they probably do more good than harm, and play an important role in nature. That doesn't mean we shouldn't deal with them though, if they start troubling us.
Fortunately they're not in troublesome numbers where I live.
bunyip is offline