We put out bird seed on the table on the deck at the back of our house. This has resulted in
1: Bird crap all over the deck
2: Bird seed sprouting into grass all over that area, crowding out some pot plants
3: Birds.
Most of the birds that turn up are Crimson Rosellas, along with...
...a selection of King-Parrots. Male King-Parrots have the reddest-looking feathers in the universe, because they've actually got a bit of Day-Glo orange mixed in there. Rosellas are brightly coloured birds, but they look downright dowdy compared with King-Parrots.
Fairly often, though, there is a great beating of small-to-medium-sized wings followed by a sound vaguely suggestive of pterodactyls. Because the Sulphur-cresteds have shown up.
The Sulphur-crested Cockatoo is, like the smaller parrots, common pretty much everywhere on the populated Australian coast. They're still impressive buggers, though, with an average weight of more than 800 grams (Urban pigeon: 200 grams. Bald eagle: 4000 grams) and a tourist-startling screech (MP3) roughly as loud as a chainsaw. Fortunately, they only visit our little bird feeder in single-digit numbers, or they'd have dismantled the whole back of the house by now.
Smaller parrots (cockatoos are not technically parrots, but they're very similar) walk as if their feet are on little wheels going round and round. Sulphur-cresteds are big enough that they walk like policemen with their hands behind their backs.
It is my theory that a Sulphur-crested Cockatoo flips up its crest whenever it has a thought.
They have a lot of thoughts when they're trying to deal with the weighty issues raised by the presence of a seed bell and of a person taking dodgy photographs of them through the living room window.
Sometimes they remind me of Eric Idle.
When Sulphur-cresteds are a bit chilly and aren't eating, they fluff up their facial feathers and completely change their expression.
Combine face-fluffing with the bendy stretchy crest-flicky stuff they do when they're staring down a human being, and you get endless entertainment.
Fun Fact: Commercial seed blocks for birds - and, probably, for rodents and other such creatures - are held together with ordinary PVA glue.