Cockatoos in a hot dance move

Keep me cockatoo cool, Curl, Keep me cockatoo cool …

A FEW years ago, a Sydney scientist noticed a sulphur-crested cockatoo opening his trash bin. Ornithologist Richard Major was impressed by the ingenuity, according to Associated Press. It’s quite a feat for a bird to grasp a bin lid with its beak, pry it open, then shuffle far enough along the bin’s edge so that the lid falls backward.

Intrigued, Major teamed up with researchers in Germany to study how many cockatoos learnt the trick. In early 2018, they found from a survey of residents that birds in three Sydney suburbs had mastered the novel foraging technique.

By the end of 2019, birds were lifting bins in 44 suburbs.

“From three suburbs to 44 in two years is a pretty rapid spread,” said Major, who is based at the Australian Museum.

The researchers’ next question was whether the cockatoos had each figured out how to do this alone – or whether they copied the strategy from experienced birds. And their research concludes that the birds mostly learnt by watching their peers.

“That spread wasn’t just popping up randomly. It started in the southern suburbs and radiated outwards,” said Major. “Basically, it caught on like a hot dance move.”

Cockatoos are gregarious birds that forage in small groups, roost in large ones, and are rarely seen alone in Sydney.

“Everyone in Sydney has an opinion about cockatoos,” says Major. “Whether you to love to watch these big flamboyant social birds, or think they’re a pest, you have to respect them.”

Earl’s Court

WHO recognises the lyrics introducing the above piece? Correct, they’re from Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport, sung by Rolf Harris, not to be confused with Barry “Bazza” McKenzie, archetypal Aussie – corks dangling from the brim of his hat – on a visit to London, as described by writer Barry Humphries, who sang thus:

There I strode down the Earl’s Court road, This nosy Pom said ‘Where’re you from?’ So I told him straight ‘Australia mate, And I feel like getting plastered.

The beer’s all crook and the sheilas look Like you, you Pommy bastard!’

Wonderful stuff. Earl’s Court, gathering point in days of yore of Aussies, Kiwis, Canadians and of course South Africans.

Repartee

OVERHEARD in the food queue: “A cop pulled me over and said: ‘Papers!’ I said ‘Scissors!’ and drove on.”

Vegetarian

BRUCE Lee had a vegetarian brother. His name: Broco Lee.

Tailpiece

ARCHAEOLOGISTS in the Middle East have discovered a 3 000-yearold mummy. They think he died of a heart attack. Found in his hand was a betting slip: “5 000 shekels on Goliath.”

Last word

MY METHOD is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity. | GEORGE BERNARD SHAW