h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's those bloody parrots again. Sulphur-crested cockatoos. It was bad enough being mocked by one yesterday, but today they're queueing up to stare at me through the window. There are three of them perched on the windowsill now. When I move, their gaze follows. If I make any sudden moves, their crests go up.

Now they're squabbling among themselves. I'm imagining that one of them wants to go and get an icecream or something, but that the others want to keep on watching the big pink ape for a bit longer.

Maybe they're just hoping I'll refill the birdbath. It does look like the tide's out.

***

Right, I've refilled the thing and there are now three large white birds al trying to be in there at once. They don't fit. There are others on the garden wall, waiting for their turn.

And one of them's back on the windowsill, staring at me...

Ivan.

Guess you forgot to leave out the towels...

MC

.. and the loungers

and the birdseed

nothing succeeds like a budgie

After yesterday, I approached this journal with anticipation.

It didn't disappoint.

Deb

You cockatoos amuse me.

The only birds I've ever seen sitting on my window ledges were some pigeons outside the bathroom window- they'd built a nest behind the furnace exhaust pipe for the winter, and the ledge was apparently useful for access. I had a rubber duckie on the inside windowsill and one of the pigeons was "talking" to it through the glass.

3 cockatoos eh? Does that make them cockathrees now then?




sowwy, I'll get me coat now.

we're tight round hereit's watch yer cocka

err 1 not 2 or 3

I love parrots. There's a flock of them that have been propagating in my city, but they don't come to my neighborhood. We don't have good trees here. That is just as well though, cause as a flock they are noisy and obnoxious.

Parrots are noisy things, far too clever for their own good, and sulphur-crests are vandals. I've seen them pull the rubber seal out of street lights just so they can hang from it by one foot and bounce up and down on it like a bungee. The they get bored and fly off screaming.

that I'd like to see with my own eyes.

Ravens are worse, they swear at the top of their lungs

FAAAAAAAAAAARK, FAAAAAAARK, FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARK

and they complain about nothing at all

We've got crows in our neighborhood. I think they keep out the parrots. I've seen them gang up on a raptor and chase it away.