Trip home at sunrise

[Shezbug]

I regularly get to see paddocks around here turned white or pink and grey with flocks if corellas or galahs but I’m never able to get decent shots as they’re usually too far off the road.
This morning they were covering the road and not all of the flock took off when I came round the bend so I pulled over to get some shots of some of the flock that didn’t take off into the trees and paddocks.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get the whole lot of them in the shot but you get an idea of how big the flocks are given that this is not even half of that flock.

 

[Greylady1966]

I've never seen anything like that. I'm in awe!! Thank you for sharing.

 

[Khizz]

Wow that's beautiful! I'm always jealous of the beautiful birds you get down under!

 

[Shezbug]

I've never seen anything like that. I'm in awe!! Thank you for sharing.

I’ll try to get some of the red rumps.... they’re much harder to get pics of as they take off quicker than the bigger parrots plus they’re harder to spot. They also tend to be on the actual road in the main part of town so it’s hard to get them unless someone else is driving. I’ll keep trying though.

 

[Greylady1966]

Is it true people consider them a pest?

 

[Shezbug]

Is it true people consider them a pest?

Yes.
They are regularly culled around here and many other places unfortunately. The local tennis and bowls clubs often get permission to use extreme measures to make them move on. They have totally rendered whole football fields and crops useless in half an hour or so. They chew great big holes in the ground and also totally ruin crops. The grain store places also have extra strong special tarps to cover their grain with before it goes into silos otherwise the birds just tear it to bits. A lot of the farmers would have driven through the flock in the hopes of getting some of the birds but I slow down, honk or stop. I hate hitting them and regularly pull over to move injured birds off the road and check if any are likely to survive if I see them..... I picked up four galahs the other week but the emergency vet wasn’t available for a few hours (out on a farm delivering a problem calf) and by then the poor things had bleed so much into their heads that they didn’t make it

 

[Greylady1966]

It's unfortunate there isn't another way to deter them.

 

[Shezbug]

They set off sounds like gun shots but after a while the birds start to ignore them. They have them constantly going in the rice fields to help keep the feral pigs out too. The animals wise up soon enough though and learn the loud noises are not actually a threat. Most of the sports fields have the fake birds on a wire that are wind activated and some have rather sophisticated set ups with batteries and motion sensors etc. The birds always end up winning though. Every measure taken eventually ends up a waste of time and effort.
Every morning between 7:30-8:30 a huge flock of corellas are chased off from somewhere close by my house ..... you can hear them coming five minutes before you can see them and if the flock stays together instead of separating into smaller flocks they actually dim the sky like cloud cover! It is fascinating to hear and see.

 

[Greylady1966]

That's a dream of mine...

 

[Begone]

Great pics!
It's hard to understand that those birds are cockatoos when you see them in such big flock.

 

[Lady Jane]

Wish we could have heard them calling. Thanks so much for thinking of us.

 

[Beasley]

Simply breathtaking!

 

[Yoshi&Raphi]

What a gorgeous flock.