Janet,
I am sorry to disallusion you but most of the the stories about
Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos and Pelicans and weather are just fallacies.
In most places say in coastal NSW, Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos are
residents, so you might see them every day, which is pretty true for where I
live. We are having a drought at present but they are still here. If they
turn up in areas where they have not been for many years that could be
because bushfires or droughts have driven them out, not because they
somehow know it is going to rain!
As for Pelicans, there are breeding colonies currently in coastal NSW at
Wallis Lake, Brisbane Water and the Five Islands off Wollongong. Believe you
me, whether ir rains in the Lake Eyre Basin or not, they don't leave here!
However, we do know that there are many large bodies of water in the Lake
Eyre Basin, some are so deep that the water could last in the lakes for 3 or
4 years. Willdife Researchers tell us that there is a major or minor flood
somewhere in the Lake Eyre Basin just about every 2-3 years. This means
therefore that the local pelican population can move from these wetlands
areas to others and breed at many of them, depending on certain
circumstances. So when Lake Eyre does fill, many Pelicans are already
present quite close at hand and soon follow the waters down the newly
flowing rivers to meet Lake Eyre etc. No doubt in extreme droughts some of
these pelicans move to the coast and at othert times, coastal pelicans for
whatever reason go wandering inland following the rivers! But they don't go
because they think it is about to rain!
Alan Morris
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