My husband, Pete, and I recently built a one bedroom cottage on our six acres of bushland on the edge of a small country town in southern Queensland. Our living room is large and is also my clinic, studio and office. There is no issue of privacy for my patients because Pete works away from here and I only take appointments while he’s away.
My patients love to come to our idyllic place for treatments because its natural surroundings with delightful birdsong are healing to the soul.
Sometimes though things can become very rowdy as they did yesterday, which was (thankfully) my day off.
Early in the morning I could hear cockatoos screeching in the old Iron Bark right next to our bedroom so I went outside to see what all the fuss was about. There were about five of these birds in the canopy along with a couple of magpies, currawongs, and a few native minors all flying in and out of the branches. At first I thought there must have been a goanna up in the tree chasing birds eggs but on closer inspection I was thrilled to see a koala – a sight that’s pretty rare these days. This was the first one I’ve seen since we’ve been here but my delight didn’t last very long when I realized the cockatoos were attacking it.
Why they would do so puzzled me because koalas are no threat to them as they only eat eucalyptus leaves and wouldn’t touch a birds’ nest although they could damage one I suppose. One of the cockatoos was particularly aggressive and was biting the koala on the bottom but soon flew off when the koala gave it a swipe with its sharp claws.
I was very worried the birds might harm the animal and afraid it would fall out of the tree so after many phone calls I was finally able to contact a wildlife carer who in turn phoned Australia Zoo to get advice on how to handle the situation. The person at the zoo said that this was just a part of a koala’s life and it has to learn to not go up the wrong tree and to just leave them all sort themselves out – the birds would either tire of harassing the koala or the koala would wait until nightfall then move on.
There was no birds’ nest in the tree but I know the aggressive cockatoo because it has been here before. We had a resident goanna and this cockatoo with the help of a currawong and crow chased it from the property and we haven’t seen it since. Why this cockatoo has such an interest in the goings on here is beyond me because it flies off towards the distant hills to roost.
By evening the other cockatoos had flown off but the aggressive one stayed on to annoy the koala until it was almost dark. Finally it left and peace and quiet returned once again. I didn’t go near the koala at night in case I frightened it as it was coming down the tree but in the morning it was gone and that damn cockatoo came back to check on it and when it saw there was no resident in the tree it flew off towards the hills and I haven’t seen it since.
The awful part of all this though was the way the cockatoo managed to get the koala to move out on to the smallest branches and then chew them apart to try and make the koala fall out of the tree. Thankfully the koala was nimble enough to grab on to another branch but we now have a pile of branches at the base of the tree to remove.
Thankfully it was peaceful today when my patients came, I couldn’t imagine trying to heal someone while cockatoos screeched so close to the house.
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