Twin billing

The sound woke me up. Massive waves cresting at 24 feet roared into Roaring Beach this morning.

Quickly, I scurried over to the Drop Stone bench and sat spell bound like a seven year old on Christmas morning. With great joyful anticipation of bigger and bigger things to come, I saw with widening eyes the visual evidence of some great storm to the south of Tasmania.

However, not to be outdone by the great sound coming from the water below, a greater piercing noise announced a chattering flock of yellow-tailed black-cockatoos. They came out of the morning shadows to the east, descended upon several banksias just beyond where I was sitting, and began to partake in a breakfast feast of seed pods.

Sociable, always in conversation and exhibiting both a humorous and tough demeanour, I have adopted this large stocky bird (four foot wing span) as one of my totem animals ever since finding a yellow tail feather in the she-oak grove up the hill back of the house.

I abandoned my box seat at the wave show in order to try and see how close I could get to the cockatoos before their sentries spotted me. I took off my woollen beanie with the red puff ball on top and shoved it into my jacket pocket. Hunched over and hiding behind woolly tea trees, native currants, banksias, blackwood scrub trees and saggs, I slowly inched my way towards the flock; a flock as happy and noisy together as any group of caffeinated New York breakfast diners.

Twenty feet, fifteen, ten, nine……… I was within seven feet of two of the birds; one holding a seed pod in its claw while eating it, the other preening itself. “What a great morning,” I thought. Two for the price of one. Big waves and twenty five or so cockatoos for company.

And then the screeching alarm went up as I’m sure one of the birds caught the sun glinting off the gold tooth exposed by my big smile.

The photo shows them heading back towards the morning sun. But not empty handed. The cockatoo, just below and to the right of the main bird in the photo, has a large banksia pod in its beak. Can you also see the waning gibbous moon hanging in the dawn air?