Its a whole perfect universe for the cockatoo.  I call the bird a kind of spirit bird, I never see baby cockatoos, I never see old ones.  They seem to live forever.  I know people who owned cockatoos through five human  generations or so. They all look the same, they make a stack of noise when they all fly in low together or sporadically to join each other, often in the same tree.

But why do they just all turn up one by one and sit in the tree for a bit, squawk to each other loudly, and then just take off… one by one again.. squawking as they go ? mate .. why ?

Well I guess they already know what they want to say, they just turn up and say it loud as they can.  I don’t know how any of them here anything the other is saying.

Do they look at each other ?

Nah.. they just sit there making a heap of noise, looking all the same in their white cockatoo suits, saying the same kind of things, and then leaving without as much as a see you later..

Right mate, guess you’re right there.

So what happens next day ?

Next day, same thing, same time, same tree, all of these cockatoos turn up dressed for a meeting or a conference of sorts, once again, some early some late, have a bit of a chat, a discussion, an argument then all leave again.  Nothing seems to get decided sometimes, and other times its as if it’s all a foregone conclusion mate…

Mate it is a conference call, same thing, you know, you get on the call, without so much as a by your leave, someone is talking, someing is joining, someone is leaving, and someone is saying something

Yep, and some of their lines only seem to work one way, like a vox mechanism. When someone is talking and just struggling to make a point, you know, keeps saying and this, and that, and, but anyway, you cannot interrupt. We all like to interrupt and make out points which just go into thin air, everyone else can hear us, except the person talking.

So yeah, cockatoos meeting is like the modern day conference call.  We all look the same, since we can’t see each other, we all turn up in our suits and leave at will, and what we say, kind of just repeats.  We turn up again the next day and say the same things again.

Oh Sure, we are definitely making progress.  But I think the conference calls just make it so we all feel ok about what we are doing, and we are all just on the same team, and we got a chance to say we still exist, got a chance to raise our voices a bit, and maybe somehow it all sinks in.  Of course the calls for us humans are more complex, spanning multiple time zones, cultures, sleep patterns, and emotions.

But it’s a whole perfect universe for the cockatoo, lives for almost ever, moves from tree to tree, calling as it goes, forming and disforming meetings, deciding on the future, then abandoning it for a nice crab apple, making a mess of it, and then moving on.
Photo: Kates Photo Diary with permission