EVERYONE is familiar with the cocky: the yellow-crested larrikin of the skies, and then there is the stately majesty of a few Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos wafting slowly over the treetops.
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Less obvious, but fiercely loved by those that know them, is the small grey and red cockatoo known as the Gang-gang Cockatoo.
Gang-gangs are usually perched high in the eucalypt trees, or in wattles such as blackwoods, cracking gum nuts and seed pods to eat the seeds inside.
They also eat insects such as wood grubs and caterpillars.
Compared to a lot of other parrots, Gang-gangs feed quietly, and the only way you know they are there is by the gentle dropping of gum nuts on the forest floor.
Gang-gangs are more noticeable when they descend from the treetops to eat one of their favourite foods – hawthorn berries.
My bird book describes the process in detail: “when feeding on the berries of hawthorn, the gang-gang will pick an individual berry off the bush with its bill, and pass the berry to its upraised left foot; they keep the left foot raised and holding the berry while the fleshy parts are eaten from around the stone”.
Like other parrots, they are always left-handed!
In Autumn, the Gang-gangs could be in the Daylesford area because they have nested locally; or they could be travelling to the Grampians, stopping to munch on our lovely Hawthorn berry crop; or they could be some of the small numbers that live in the area all year round.
Their movements are poorly understood – but the main trend seems to be highlands in Summer, lowlands in Winter.
In NSW and the ACT, the Gang-gangs are declining in number quite dramatically and no-one knows why.
To find out more about their local Gang-gangs, the Canberra Ornithologists Group just completed a whole year of citizen science survey programs - with four week-long “gang-gang musters” where everyone submitted their records online.
And the local schools had a wonderful Gang-gang art competition and show.
I think we are in a little Gang-gang hotspot here – some years I have had mum and dad and baby at my place for a few months, and regularly see flocks of up to forty birds.
This year, numbers have been pretty low, but you wouldn’t know it from all the gorgeous pics coming up on social media this Autumn.
