A late note about sulphur-crested cockatoos and house timber damage.
In 1980 I moved into a new timber house in the Basin, in the Dandenong Ranges
near
Melbourne.
One of the local flocks of cockies [about 80 birds] was in the habit of roosting
nearby on the Mountain highway, and would fly up the ravine by my place each
morning
on the way out to feed in the Ranges for the day.
As more people moved into the area and the cockies were provided with bird seed,
they would dally a bit as they headed out, looking for 'cheap eats'. At some
stage
they discovered the malaysian cedar that was part of my house and took a liking
to
exercising their beaks [or was it boredom?] by striping the planks back.
The matter got serious indeed! A lover of birds at war with birds. When they
landed
on the roof at 6am I was up at a flash to chase them away but you have to go to
work
sometime.
I sought help for the bird associations, the National parks and the Arthur Rylah
Institute and got all the usual suggestions
scarecrows/ images of raptors
shotgun sound tapes
tapes of cockies in distress
In the end I exhuasted my supply of sky rockets [do you remember them on Guy
Fawkes
Night?] brought back from Asia, which I fired off from pot plants at first
light in
the morning, in my pyjamas, to get the message across. Dont know what the
neighbours
thought.
In the meantime I had plenty of practice repairing damaged timber.
Finally someone suggested giving the timber a bitter taste to deter them [they
weren't touching the treated pine] and a solution of water and phenol was
recommended. I painted this smelly, clear liquid onto the timbers and the
cockies
went away and while they came back from time to time, they left the timber
alone.
Not sure about the desirability of the solution but it did work at the time.
Today's
products like 'Piss off' for keeping possums at bay, work for possums
[sometimes]
but I hear, not for cockies.
Laurie Living
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