Terryc wrote:
FarmI wrote:

They haven't started eating your house or trees or nippin of the top
of vegetables for 'fun' I assume ;-))

Is anyone feeding other birds close by?

I have a theory that if people feed other birds, then the white
cockatoo, etc also comes down for a look and then ends up doing what
comes naturally; chewing through house wood looking for grubs.

Our blocks have 5 large gums in the backyard which are favourite rest/
get together places for white cockatoos and others, but in the 24 years
we have been here, they have never attacked any house or other wood.
Yep, the gum gets it regularly.

As to veges. right under the tree, but they have never come down to
them. It might be flight lines, aka lack of long take off runs.

I notice that they feast on exotic pine nuts on 2m-3m high pines in
other front gardens in the street and higher ones in other back yards.


Years ago, someone posted here that the best way of keeping unwanted
native birds out of one's property was to display one or two large
rubber snakes in clear view. Apparently, it was an effective deterrent
and might be worth a try? Maybe the cockies might even be put off by an
old length of hose on your roof?

--
Trish {|:-} Newcastle, NSW, Australia

In article ,
"0tterbot" wrote:

cockies 1: the black cockatoos freak me RIGHT OUT. it's that noise they
make. they freak my chickens out as well.

They do sound eerie, don't they? I love them. I think they look glamorous.
For a parrot, of course.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/

"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote in message
...

Ask around the older members of your community. One of the long range old
school weather forecasters (of the Lennox Walker variety, but I can't
specifically remember which one it was) once wrote that of all those old
wive's tale animal weather forecasters, the "black cockies flying over
screeching" was the only one he actually believed in and found to be a
true rain forecaster.

i'm going to make some observations!!

while watching "ten canoes" on telly the other week, i got the impression
that black cockatoos were/are considered a bad luck bird (because they
made everyone nervous, then after that there was an unhappy incident
within the story etc etc). i might have been seeing things that weren't
there & projecting, though ;-)

Coul dbe something in it. If you think about it, if you wore very few
clothes and lived with very little reliable shelter, you too would think
that rain was bad luck :-))

hm - but the people lived near wetlands (hence the title) so would
appreciate rain... i just reckon they've been freaking people out for
millennia, that's all!!

i love them! they don't bother me at all.

They haven't started eating your house or trees or nippin of the top of
vegetables for 'fun' I assume ;-))

no! the most they ever do (so far!!) is fly about a bit & sit in the big
trees saying the odd "hello cocky" ;-) they must only pass through on the
way to your place g

the bane of my life re vegetables is the frigging wallabies (who are so
adorable i secretly love them of course - but i've had a gutful of their
behaviour). yesterday i found i have lost my second-prize pumpkin, dammit!
all chewed up. and it's been in the lettuces, too, and i have enough
problems with lettuce as it is without some beast chewing half of them off
just when they are going beautifully.

this naughty wallaby is really playing me like a banjo, you know. he is the
master of the random attack after weeks of peace.
kylie

"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote in message
...

THAT makes sense.
at our place, some were placed along small ridges, (less than 1m wide).
you can imagine how silly that seems to me.

Hmmm, sounds to me like the ridges might have been formed by
machinery??????

yes.

Could that be the explanation of how they were made or are they supposed
to be sawles for water diversion? Where you are in wet times, it makes
sense planting on mounds/ridges rather than in a depression whihc makes
more sense here.

i think they might have been swales - in which case they are running
slightly the wrong direction!, or planting ridges (the 2nd-previous owners
wrote in their book that they brought a commercial crop of snow peas to
fruition, so they might have been for that, or for the raspberries that were
there on the ridges, but since wandered. or indeed swales and planting
ridges combined. there used to be more fruit trees (or something) on the
ridges but they died before we came. the ridges look to be flattening out
more now. is that possible? (compaction, presumably).

this is the same area where there are lines of jonquils, which i have
mentioned. they also did lavender and garlic in lines, but those lines are
more the "right" direction to catch run-off. i can't quite fathom what they
were exactly trying to achieve tbh. i think too much stuff died after they
left for it to be clear what they were doing, really.
kylie

"Terryc" wrote in message
...
FarmI wrote:

By 'head' I mean the point where the erosion starts - often jsut a tiny
point of erosion in the grass, but widening out as you go downhill to God
knows how big at the end of the gully.

My understanding is that it is the velocity of the water that does the
damage, aka washes the soil away.

Have you tried the carpet trick? Peg carpet up from and over the head.
Ideally this protects the soil at the head from being washed away and
eroded area expanding. Hopefully by the time the carpet rots away, grass
has established strongly. Carpet will also hold soil on top to help grass,
etc, establish.

am doing sheet composting (literally with old sheets!) on the flatter areas
of erosion. i know that will work. the bad one i refer to here really needs
filling up, however, i think there would be usefulness in using fabric (held
by wire, probably) over the actual soil before filling with other stuff. (or
just getting machinery in like farm1 says).
kylei

"0tterbot" wrote in message
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote in message


Coul dbe something in it. If you think about it, if you wore very few
clothes and lived with very little reliable shelter, you too would think
that rain was bad luck :-))

hm - but the people lived near wetlands (hence the title) so would
appreciate rain...

Yebbut..... we graze cattle and thus need to rain to grow the feed, but if I
was nekked and living in a obugh shelter, I still woulnd't look forawrd to
the rain despite what it did for the cattle.

i just reckon they've been freaking people out for
millennia, that's all!!

Could be. But have you ever heard a Powerful Owl? A woman being murdered
in the bush!

i love them! they don't bother me at all.

They haven't started eating your house or trees or nippin of the top of
vegetables for 'fun' I assume ;-))

no! the most they ever do (so far!!) is fly about a bit & sit in the big
trees saying the odd "hello cocky" ;-) they must only pass through on the
way to your place g

the bane of my life re vegetables is the frigging wallabies (who are so
adorable i secretly love them of course - but i've had a gutful of their
behaviour). yesterday i found i have lost my second-prize pumpkin, dammit!
all chewed up. and it's been in the lettuces, too, and i have enough
problems with lettuce as it is without some beast chewing half of them off
just when they are going beautifully.

this naughty wallaby is really playing me like a banjo, you know. he is
the master of the random attack after weeks of peace.

They are lovely but...

My mother loved her garden and as a child I well remember the care and
attention she gave it but all too frequently some mongrel animal would break
in and wreak havoc. I swore when I grew up and developed an interest in
gardening that this was not going to be something I would ever tolerate.

During the drought we had 2 huge buck roos who would come in and loll on the
lawn. That would have been fine if all they did was loll about and look
decorative. It wasn't and I was a bit wary of them anyway as I have had 2
people I know actually attacked by a roo - not deliberately, just came
across them suddenly and they reared back on their tails and did the feet up
thing.

For weeks I chased then each time I saw them but in the end all they would
do is hop the fence and head out about 100 yards and stop and turn back to
watch me. I eventually pointed a metal stick at one and he fell over. The
other one came back the next day, but hasn't been seen since.

"0tterbot" writes:
no! the most they ever do (so far!!) is fly about a bit & sit in the big
trees saying the odd "hello cocky" ;-) they must only pass through on the
way to your place g

One evening last year my Mum was walking around the block with her 6 y/o
grandson. As they passed a magpie on a fence post the boy said to the
bird, "Hello, Maggie". The magpie answered, "Hello!".

Now my Mum goes around saying "Hello" to every magpie in the hope of
again discovering the talking one.

Well, that's how she explains it, anyway .... :-)
--
John Savage (my news address is not valid for email)