A true Story of Love, Compassion, Friendship & Loyalty...

About eight years ago a wild Australian Sulphur Crested Cockatoo flew into a car and broke its wing.
The motorist took it to the vet in Nerang, Queensland, who had to amputate the wing.
We adopted her - for which we needed a National Parks and Wildlife permit - and kept her in a cage outside where she was often visited by wild cockatoos.
One of the things that impressed us was how she would push lettuce leaves through the bars of the cage, offering food to the occasional visiting Sulphur Crest.
Last Sunday 23 July 2006, she again had a visitor.

But this one was different because it spent a lot of time sitting on the cage which had a tamper proof latch on its door.

There was a lot of talking and grooming. Obviously it was male and a bloke has to look presentable when courting a bird!

Things got interesting when he approached the door and spent some considerable time inspecting it.

The clever fellow figured out how to undo the tamper proof latch!

He opened the door, and after some hesitation and much discussion, in he went, and a lot of mutual grooming and food sharing followed.

Oooh that's nice! Scratch a bit more on that side, dear...

After that he was not shy to get into the cage and would go in and out a number of times during the day, although she never ventured out.

And then.....they mated! Well, well.......we hadn't expected it to go quite so far!!!

Later on  that day, the extended family came visiting.  It seemed a great celebration was going on.

The story continues....  After that the special male would come visiting every day, and his stay became longer and longer. We would leave the door open during the day but if we forget, it didn't matter - cockatoos have intelligence that rival primates.
Because she had only one wing, she stayed inside or at best, would just sit on top.  At first it seemed as though he was trying to coax her to fly off with him, and he would squawk a lot in annoyance. Soon however, he seemed to understand that she could not fly, so he just stayed and quietened down.   Soon she moved away from from her cage and the two of them would stay in the trees in our garden, and because the yard is well fenced they were safe from the neighbours' dogs. Although cats would come second best in a confrontation with a cockatoo, at night cats posed a danger because they could kill a sleeping bird. But as the male was now always with her we didn't worry too much.

Cockatoos make their nests in hollow logs but we noticed the male hard at work digging a hole on the ground under a clump of Lilly Pilly trees. We put down a hollow log for them but they just ignored it. The nest he dug was an elongated hole and it was where she finally laid her eggs. Once the eggs arrived, the male became extremely aggressive.  If you got near the nest the male would attack your feet and try to take chunks of flesh from it...  It was difficult to take these pictures because I literally had to steal them while running away from him.

We kept a vigil to see how things were progressing.
They took turns incubating the eggs and after about three weeks, the eggs hatched.   Have a careful look at this picture and try to spot the bit of yellow fluff.

Whenever Mum & Dad Cockatoo left the nest, we'd try to get a look but you had to do it while running because Dad Cockatoo would soon come and chase you!

Second lap running around the Lilly Pilly trees!

Well, I hope his mother thinks he is pretty, and eventually I might think so too, but at the moment both of them just look like pink balls with a bit of yellow fluff.

How's that for a true Love Story???? Definitely has the aaawwwwwzzzzzz  factor!