Beak hour traffic destroying heritage buildings

Here's looking at you...a small flock of recalcitrant cockatoos is troubling residents of Potts Point and Elizabeth Bay and causing worsening damage to apartment buildings. Photo: Nick Moir

Residents have tried everything to get rid of them: flashing lights, rubber snakes, spikes on sills, mirrors on windows, chilli oil on woodwork, even lying in wait with hoses or water pistols. But the sulphur-crested cockatoos of Potts Point, which have caused more than $40,000 in damage to one building alone, are absolutely incorrigible, say infuriated residents, whose plan for a cull is stuck in bureaucratic limbo.

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'Cocky' shot twice

MURRARY WILSON/Manawatu Standard: Shot by a coward: Cocky the cockatoo is recovering at Massey University: after being shot in the Esplanade's aviary.

A "coward" is being blamed for the shooting of a cockatoo at the Palmerston North Esplanade's aviary.

The cockatoo, named Cocky, was shot in his cage earlier this week.

He was recovering from two bullet wounds at the Massey University Wildlife Centre yesterday.

Centre director Brett Gartrell said Cocky was doing well. "He's obviously sore, he's lost some blood."

Whoever had shot the bird a was "coward" and "idiot".

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Not just winging it: Snowball the dancing cockatoo whose sense of rhythm has amazed scientist

He's got rhythm: Snowball the dancing cockatoo has been hailed by scientists as proof that humans aren't the only creatures with rhyth.Meet Snowball, the dancing cockatoo who is forcing scientists to re-evaluate their opinion on avian intelligence.

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Parrots tend to be 'left-handed'

All of the sulphur-crested cockatoos studied by the researchers were left-handed (Source: Eddy Knopper/stock.xchng)Parrots, like humans, choose to use one side of their body more than the other, with more of them left-handed - or, more precisely, left-footed than anything else.

Some species even try out both before deciding on one side.

Australian researchers found that virtually all the parrots they studied prefer to use either their left eye and left foot, or right eye and right foot.

"Basically, you get this very close relationship with the eye that they use to view the object and then the hand that they use to grasp it, and it's very consistent across all the species except a couple," says Dr Culum Brown, a senior lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, who led the study.

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Petition in support of cockatoos

Cockatoos at breakfast Photo: S. Baker

I am overjoyed at the support I have been receiving from the public, and the media, over the ongoing campaign against the cockatoo cull in broadway.

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