Cockatoos at Three Springs Galahs, perhaps the most celebrated of outback parrots, have been described as 'lovely things that, in a flash, wheel as though created out of thin air and sunset colours,' or as 'birds a bushman loves to hate'. To cook one, they joke, 'boil it with a boot, mate, and eat the boot!'
The real lives of cockatoos are noisy and intriguingly social. But, as woodlands vanish, the major mitchells, corellas and others, including galahs, face persecution by wheat farmers and kidnapping by smugglers. In fact, the cockies can be beneficial in the fields, but with fewer places to live they face a bleak future, perhaps only as pets with a price on their elegant heads.
Narrator Robyn Williams Photography DON HANRAN SMITH Film editor DAVID LUFFMAN
Produced for the AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION by JOHN VANDENBELD
Series editor PETER JONES BBC Bristol
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