Friday 1 March 2013

Dispatches from the Tropics: 1 March 2013


I was staring out of the window the other day — an activity that I like to call 'seeking inspiration', although it is better known by its synonym 'procrastination' — when I noticed something white in one of the citrus trees. I thought it might have been a plastic shopping bag, as unlikely as that was. But when I whipped out the binoculars, I saw it was a lone sulphur-crested cockatoo...

Cockatoo feasts while magpie-lark flies past appalled

...a lone sulphur-crested cockatoo that proceeded to consume more than three dozen limes during the course of the afternoon. Fascinated by the bird's prodigious appetite and wondering at what point the acidity was going turn its beak inside out, I watched it for over an hour. I'm not proud of that. I merely report it.

Unsurprisingly, the bird has not yet returned to the garden.