Nasty Foreigners

There is an avenue of oak trees that leads from my house up through the park to the local shops. Each year, the trees produce an almost absurd amount of acorns:

I used to wonder why nature was so profligate. But then one day I walked up to buy the paper and saw the ground under the trees covered with cockatoos.

Someone at the Sydney Morning Herald took this absolutely brilliant picture. It captures the essence of cockatoo, I think.

They were using their claws to pick up the acorns, which they shoved into their beaks and ate, all the time rolling their eyes at anyone approaching. As I drew nearer, their bright yellow crests all began flattening and rising, flattening and popping up again, like some kind of clown's apparatus. Finally, when I got too close, they rose in a shrieking mob, scattering acorns as they flapped away.

There are people in Canberra who object to introduced species like the oak tree. Although the cockatoos clearly love the food the trees produce and by being distracted by acorns are prevented from doing the kinds of thing they're being accused of in Sydney -

- these people argue that our area's delicate eco-machinery has been disturbed and, despite the cockatoos' pleasure - and the pleasant shade the trees provide in summer - they should never have been planted. Of course, if you follow that argument to its logical conclusion, this whole city should really be swept away.