High Flyers
Allen Morris
Living in Little Bay, a coastal south eastern suburb of Sydney, Australia, I do not know if it is the beautiful wailing sound that echoes across the coastal landscape when a flock of yellow-tailed black-cockatoos first appear in the sky above, or if it is when I watch them fly in a beautiful slow motion action across the sky, with everyone in the flock apparently knowing their place in the formation. Either way, whenever they appear, heading to their foraging grounds in the morning or returning home to their roost area in the evening, I feel at peace with nature, connected.
These captivating cockatoos spend a lot of time munching on banksia seed pods, in the nearby Kamay Botany Bay national park and several smaller patches of remnant habitat spread across south eastern Sydney. This bush, formally called eastern suburbs banksia scrub, is an endangered ecological community - quite simply, it has
been replaced with houses.
The survival of this flock of yellow-tailed black-cockatoos in Kamay Botany Bay national park is dependent upon the existing stock of eastern suburbs banksia scrub being protected from further urban encroachment.
Allen is an amateur ecologist living in a coastal area
where nature always manages to spring a surprise.