Anne here, and this time I'm not going to be digging into any history, just a little bit of personal history. I hope you'll forgive me, but I'm in the last stages of a book, and don't have time to dig out some historical tale for you. This story was inspired by the photos you see in this blog which were taken by my friend, Cate Ellink — they took me right back to when I was a child, and we had a sulphur-crested cockatoo, just like the one in the photos. (And aren't the photos superb?)
I first met Cocky (he never did get a proper name) when I was a child walking to my primary school in a small country town. He lived on the end of a long chain and frequently hopped back and forth along the long peaked roof of a neighbor's garage, calling out things to passers by, things like "Hello Cocky", and "Hello Pooh!" and dancing up and down, his yellow crest bobbing.
Then one day those neighbors moved, to Melbourne I heard, and Cocky with them, I assumed. Later that week I was wandering with my dog down near the lagoon near where we lived on the outskirts of town, when I heard, "Hello Pooh," from high up in a nearby tree. It was Cocky. The neighbors must have released him into the wild.
Now cockatoos are wild in Australia. They circle in great screeching flocks, or graze quietly on grassy swards, nibbling on grass roots, or perch en masse in gum trees chattering noisily. But a cocky that's been tamed or raised in captivity could never survive in the wild — even at the age of ten, I knew that.