The birds getting shot were the pink and grey ones, Galahs. They and Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos are real pests but are protected in National Parks. The laws may have changed recently to give them wider protection, I'm not sure.
The Sulphur-Cresteds can eat a timber house in days. The problem is, they're pretty, they're smart and people love to feed them. All it takes is one family in a neighbourhood feeding the cockatoos and they turn up in huge flocks. The problems then come because the birds are getting their meal too easily, they don't have to work at it and take time, exercise and mental effort to get a feed, so they get bored and chew stuff purely out of boredom (and, I suspect, a bit of spite at those who do not feed them). It's because of them that we have to have netting over all our garden. They will neatly snip off flowers, vegetables, fruit - everything. We're lucky, we don't have too much timber, but they will rapidly destroy timberwork around a house. We had lunch last Friday down in Royal National Park, where there is a kiosk in the bush (with lots of signs saying to not feed the birds) and although the place is well maintained, you could see that all the picnic tables and chairs had been badly chewed, with large holes right through the timber.
The Galahs - a big problem in grain farming country. Why should they go forage when farmers go to the trouble of planting wheat, just for them? Then the farmers leave the wheat in silos or in heaps ready to load, and the Galahs can descend in numbers so vast the sky is darkened. I remember as a child going inland with my parents, into farming country. It was wheat harvest time and the fields were covered with Galahs, you couldn't see the plants or the ground. My father said that it is often even worse. And where were trucks carrying wheat, it had to be covered and even then they would rip through the tarp covering it. And wheat spills on the road - Galahs in huge numbers would land to eat it, so many of them that vehicles travelling along couldn't avoid hitting the birds. They were just too crowded to be able to take off. We saw many Galah corpses, but maybe a fraction of 1% of all the birds there. Then the crows would land, occasionally one of them would get hit as well. We tried to avoid them, slowed right down, but still hit a few - the Galahs get bold and try for that last grain of wheat...
It really did look like a mouse plague, or a rabbit plague, only it was pink and grey. And of course they would poop in the seed and render it useless. Farmers could find a field stripped bare, worse than locusts.
In recent drought years, we've seen more Galahs leave the wheat belt and travel to the coast for grass seeds. Generally when we see Galahs at the coast, we know the drought is bad.
I do wish they would allow legal export of our white cockatoos and galahs when they're in plague proportions. Same with roos.
And that Rainbow Lorikeet you had - it must have been a fair bit more than a baby, they tame really easily even at a year old or more. They also change colour as they get older - in their first year they have much more green on them. At least, I think that's the case - I'll ask husband [bit from Marg's Man - the colours develop as they get older and there is less need for camouflage]. I think they get more of their purple colours at a year old. We get wild ones sometimes, flying down and cocking their heads at us as if asking for food. We've had wild ones land on us. [bit from Marg's Man - They should not eat seed although they can; they eat nectar like your honeyeaters. Their tongues can be damaged by seeds so that they starve to death]
I'm glad you've seen them for yourself - it's hard to describe sometimes. They are beautiful to live with, but they are very noisy and their cousins are very destructive. When I see my long stems of orchids which I've nurtured and are just about to open from the buds, snipped off and lying trashed on the ground, I get very upset with them. I'm currently trying to grow tomatoes - THAT is going to be interesting!
Marg
