Australia’s trash bin-raiding cockatoos | Hacker News Reader

Australia’s trash bin-raiding cockatoos

smithsonianmag.com

141 pointsNotSwift95 comments

We had cockatoos who lived with us north of Melbourne (out St Andrews way). They are great birds, and fascinating to watch, and also, if you feed good quality bird seed then they will come around at the same time every day, and be your friends, and if one day you don't feed them for some reason, they deliberately throw your pot plants off your window ledge, one by one, smashing them to the ground, and then you swear never, ever to feed the brilliant little fuckers again.

Lived out that way growing up. They gnawed at our weatherboards and deck railing. Always a major PITA.

Years back when I lived in South Morang, they would go house to house digging through the rubbish bins. Even if you put bricks on the lids, they would team up to topple them off and get the lid open.

Nowadays I live a little further south, we have clouds of screaming Cockies every morning. I wouldn't dare feed them for fear they would bring the entire hoard.

They are cool birds bu very... independent if you will.

> Even if you put bricks on the lids, they would team up to topple them off and get the lid open.

Sounds like a perfect opportunity to place a jack-in-the-box. :)

I'd be worried they'd plot some kind of revenge.

As they slowly dismantle your house, your car, your life.

As they slowly dismantle your house, your car, and ultimately.. your life.

Bird Spotting

Can confirm this is 100% true. They are super smart and super destructive.

Rainbow Lorikeets are similarly fascinating birds.

However like Cockatoos, if you forget to feed them, they will happily destroy everything. I remember seeing photos years ago of someone who'd been feeding Rainbow Lorikeets regularly from their wooden balcony.

They went away for a few weeks and came back to find that most of the balcony railing where they'd normally provide feed had been torn apart like a thousand tiny little woodchippers had been at it.

It was one of those stories that I've remembered and repeat to anyone who decides to feed the cute birds that come around.

I got the opportunity to see some in an aviary. They are so friendly and vibrant.

Pot plants, you say? I am sorry for your loss.

Pot plants are just potted plants in Australian parlance.

I think the parent commenter knows that, I took it as a humorous deliberate misreading to get the joke in.

In 2007, our one year old son was tossing them food while we’d turned around. We were on a 9th floor patio and hadn’t seen the bird join us.

We just avoided him getting pecked!

Not just cockatoos, but also magpies, at least that's what I've observed recently. Both are intelligent birds with not so good reputation, I'd avoid making them my enemies. Both can do significant damanages to your garden and plants. Cockatoos and magpies are intelligent enough to observe human beahviour and retaliate when those who try to offend them when they are not present at home (don't ask me how I know this...). Over time, I learned to make friends with them, make the gardens friendly and attractive to them, toys (river stones, small toys, ablone shells, etc.), clean water source and so on, I've been living with both cockatoos and magpies for years now. It seems that the magpies have a strong sense of territory, the same group returns everyday, while cockatoos visit less often, or simply randomly.

On cockatoos: One of my neighbours have been keeping a white cockatoo as pets for 10+ years, the bird start to lose feather on tis chest... The bird is kept in a large cage with a meshed window facing a park / playground, the bird says hello to pretty much everyone who waves at or greets it. Sometimes it even says "have fun" in a weird tone - it took me at least 20 times before I figured out what it was trying to say ;-)

On magpies: their beaks are not at advantage to open bin lids as cockatoos'. However, individual magpies are smart and powerful enough to open overflowed bins' lids and mess up the garbage.

> On cockatoos: One of my neighbours have been keeping a white cockatoo as pets for 10+ years, the bird start to lose feather on tis chest...

It's not "losing" feathers, it's likely pulling them out due to living in a confined space without appropriate social ties and thus behaving like this.

Ding ding ding.

Dont cage birds, if you are not working from home and giving them stimulation all day everyday, its torture.

Can be also Psittaccine beak and feathers disease, a relatively common and non treatable disease of cockatoos caused by (who would suspect that) a circovirus. This birds were born to be the avian version of the Jocker (and a really good one).

Magpies become extra territorial during breeding season and swoop, defending their patch. They also recognise and remember individual humans, too. For some reason the ones up our street took a dislike to my son and will swoop at him every season, but never bother the other three of us.

During the protracted Melbourne lock-downs last year, when you did go for a drive down to the shops for your groceries and such, you could see huge groups of cockies and galahs hanging around. Not as much fun as the small English town that got invaded by goats, but I did wonder once or twice if I was in an Alfred Hitchcock film.

We should clarify that Australian Magpies are a completely different genus to other magpies. They are in their own branch genetically and there's really not much else like them. They were called magpies because they are black and white.

Their behavior is equally as unique as their genome. Highly intelligent and highly territorial. They will attack humans without hesitation if they perceive a threat.

The real connoisseurs of trash are the Bin Chickens:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4dYWhkSbTU

In SA they've retained some of their elegance, so I was really surprised to find out they have such a bad name in the bigger cities! They are really elegant in flight.

It's the Ibi~~~s... (nsfw language)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO-OpFjHRbE

We have our own bin chickens in America! They are everywhere in Florida

American White Ibis

Incredible video, thank you! I thought it really was a Planet Earth segment but it slowly became more and more hilarious.

Here is one that visited our house:

https://files.littlebird.com.au/IMG_0420-rU3XEJ8IqAEehOrAwkJ...

https://files.littlebird.com.au/IMG_0271-hdbzS2TIutwOL5rAajP...

https://files.littlebird.com.au/IMG_0435-NDeiqB4ebNXl9leyBr8...

https://files.littlebird.com.au/IMG_0432-PoRHBh7IZWvtLjCxUZN...

We don't encourage them because they can eat our wooden deck.

If we’re sharing cockatoo pictures, here’s one from 2019: on a table in Halls Gap, a cockatoo eating some pizza crust that it had been given by a tourist, sitting right beside a sign that I can only interpret as “don’t feed the kookaburras”: https://temp.chrismorgan.info/DSC06148.JPG

Great shot!

Looks like a scene from a sequel to Untitled Goose Game

My old friend had a Cockatoo who lived with them as a kid, but wasn't captive at all. He just chose to spend his time with them after they found him orphaned and took care of him for a while. He would disappear for a day or two and come back, and he would follow my friend to school and hang out around the classrooms waiting. The teachers would try to shoo him and he would rage against the machine, they are loud as hell. Appropriately, his name was "Rowdy".

"Cockatoos... producing an average of 120 decibels and loudest of 135 decibels of noise. The loudness can be judged by looking at the noise level of 140 decibels of a 747 Jumbo Jet."

I wonder if their ears are physically more resistant to hearing damage than ours, or if they're just guaranteed to go deaf as they age.

In captivity they can live up to 80 years old so if it's possible someone knows the answer to that. I have to imagine they have something similar to humans ears where we have a muscle to dampen the sounds of our jaw area and voice.

Angus of Maker’s Muse posted a video last year about creating puzzles for the local wild cockatoos. They’re very smart birds.

[1] https://youtu.be/A5YyTHyaNpo

There are a couple of things Aussie kids are taught from a young age: don't touch spiders; don't splash water at the pool or throw sand at the beach; and don't stick your fingers in the cocky cage.

> don't splash water at the pool

why is that?

So the walkways around the pool edge don't get wet, which would cause a tripping hazard for people walking past.

You'll get boxed around the ears by your elders :)

I shared a house with a demented Cockatoo once. He was rescued from poor conditions and didn't really know how to be a bird.

They are really smart -- like toddler smart, and very curious. They can solve puzzles, pick locks, and have epic screaming tantrums when they don't get what they want. Every. single. day.

The video below is not mine, but resembles my experience living with a crazy parrot:

https://youtu.be/BB4Qhtuxe6A?t=45

Before the council cut down the gum tree, they used to deliberately drop branches on me when I was outside. Any they could bite through, up to maybe 1.5cm thick, they would wait until I walked around the car then drop them on my head, and scream their heads off. Crafty bastards

I've seen aussie birds seek out and reposition thrown out empty energy drinks to finish off the last few drops. Apparently they act just young teenagers in many ways.

There is a post here about Kea and it links to a video of them moving traffic cones on the road, which messes with traffic.

It is very much like teenage behaviour.

It's not really crazy. Parrots can like or hate you. That's why they can be a terrible pet.

Cockatoo removing bird spikes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7UFoEuzYvc

I would hate this if I'd live there but it's still fascinating. These birds are so smart. I wonder how birds will do in like 200-300 years. Some birds in urban cities already fly through the subway system to find food.

In 200-300 years, given the projections of climate change? Probably about as well as everything else...

Even apart from global warming, approximately 1 in 8 bird species are already on the brink of extinction. Major causes are loss of habitat, introduction of predators (cats, rats, snakes) and spread of diseases (bird flu is already pandemic but new one will certainly arise).

Not only that. They live in the stations, because why not? Perfectly protected spaces. Except if flooded.

That's not exactly wanted here, because of the corrosive bird shit, possible interference with information displays, signalling systems and/or overhead wire/third rail, health concerns, and so on. But somehow they manage to evade or adapt all countermeasures so far.

Mostly pigeons/doves, the 'rats of the air', but also some larger seagulls.

Funny when you stand on the platform, bored, watching some talking heads yabbering on some projected screen, waiting for a few minutes until the next train.

And then suddenly one of the larger seagulls serenely gliding in out of the tunnel along the track, against the direction, scanning the platform.

Like WTF!?

This must be some kind of installer error because if they can be picked up and removed something will do that.

Yup Australia, the place were nature hates you passionately.

Now with metal spikes raining over your head included, because we felt creative and you have two eyes.

In the 1980's I attended an amazing talk by Lynn Conway. She described how with Carver Mead she had popularlized VLSI design methodology, using her studies in anthropology for insights into deliberately fomenting a revolution.

She opened the talk with a map of birdwatcher observations, detailing the concentric circles of technology spread across England as blue tits taught each other to peck open foil caps:

"In the early 20th century, milkmen would deliver milk to British doorsteps, in bottles that were sealed with foil caps. Then, in the 1920s, homeowners started noticing holes in the foil. The culprits were blue tits. They had learned to peck open the bottle caps to drink the layer of cream beneath. The behaviour quickly spread. By the 1950s, it seemed that every blue tit in Britain knew the technique."

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/scientist...

True story. During ww2 Aussie diggers used to post a lookout for their superiors they would nickname the cockatoo while they were gambling or misbehaving. The cockatoo would make noise letting their fellow soldiers know of the incoming officer.

This habit is named after the same habit the birds have for predators.

It always amazes me how much food is left in bins.

I personally try to never chuck food away - it saves me money, saves the environment and helps others eat (by keeping food prices low). Perhaps once a month do I chuck something out. (Usually because it's gone mouldy before the best before date)

Yet I have seen people who seem to chuck out tens of things every week. I just don't understand their logic - why buy what you can't eat?

In this video for example are bits of uneaten bread/sandwiches.

Just don't throw away food recklessly. As part of EU drive for garbage recycling/separation it's now becoming mandatory to put food scraps and leftovers separately into dedicated container. That's a good thing to avoid wildlife learning to scavenge.

In the past decade wild hogs have grown to be a major problem in Polish cities. Plowing through lawns, tipping over trash bins. The animals themselves are not an immediate danger to humans (they really do not care about you), but they destroy gardens and can cause car accidents.

All these 5 or so mandatory segregation bins do not fit into the enclosure, so in my case one of them is on the driveway, which hogs tip over almost every night. Not sure how to deal with them without making trash collectors' lives harder.

It's so ironic I haven't seen one hog (or marks of their existence) back on vacations in countryside.

Yeah, but then since the good fellow humans are too lazy to properly lock the bins, the raven gangs manage to open them anyway.

Also it doesn't help that in most cities you have to hunt down to a garbage bin close to bus stops, which is then stuffed with all kinds of possible garbage anyway.

If they are the "Punks of the bird world", then what are New Zealand's Keas? I heard from a New Zealander that they will completely dismantle your convertible car (with a soft top) or your bicycle, if you leave it with them.

Update: Here is a Kea playing with traffic cones: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/kea-mischief-caught-on-cam/XIO...

Update2: Keas vandalizing police car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBdvRCkCNfo

I’ve seen them push moderate size rocks off bin lids in order to get in. I’ve seen them remove a broom handle that was pushed through the handles of multiple bins (by pushing the broom handle out first).

And then I’ve seen a group of them get fed by sliding down a tin roof on their claws, making the most hellish noise to get the humans out of bed.

Usually though, they are just ripping bits off cars and mangling the aerials.

They are hilarious and destructive arseholes.

I strongly suspect that Kea are the most intelligent animal other than humans and maybe chimps.

I'm an Australian, and of course am familiar with cockatoos. In fact a couple years ago the neighbourhood got together at Xmas, and discovered after a few drinks a cockatoo was running a protection racket on all of us. The guy across the road has his BBQ vandalised if he didn't feed them, we had our shoes torn apart, the mechanic next door has his tools stolen - and so on. Each household was targeted on a different day over weeks.

It is annoying, but I was secretly proud Australia had the imaginatively destructive birds on the planet. Then I went to NZ and found I was wrong. While I watched, a Kea took a a fellow tourists car. First the radio antenna was thrown to the ground. Then it attacked the gunk that holds the windscreen in. I left to do the tourist thing, and when I cam back some car window was on the ground, the seat upholstery was in shreds and car dash reduced to little pieces of plastic. Horrified, I rushed off to tell one local store owners, who just gave me "what can you do shrug". And this was just one bird in less than an hour. I'm not sure I could have got into that car so quickly without tools.

Later I noticed all the houses had everything more delicate that a 1" iron pipe covered in wire mesh - including the TV antenna's. (I have no idea why the antenna's still worked.) The place was like fort Knox.

They are the most amazing birds, and as you say come across as highly intelligent. Like all intelligent things, they can be remarkably deadly. Kea's have been know to eat and kill a sheep (in that order).

Now that was some entertaining reading. Thanks!

> Here is a Kea playing with traffic cones

They're not just playing. They figured out that by moving the cones into a traffic lane they can get vehicles to stop.

Cars often have to stop here as it's a one lane tunnel so the kea wait around to receive food or play with people/vehicles.

There's a big flock of these that fly around my place just wrecking tree's. Every 2-3 months they swing past my yard and strip my pine tree's and then terrorize my neighbor who's been trying to grow a walnut tree for a few years.

It's pretty entertaining. They are smart and just seem to always find trouble.

Iggy Pop keeps a Moluccan Cockatoo called BiggyPop. He has a bunch of videos of Biggy judging and rocking out to music if he likes it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a7TGxn3cVU

https://www.instagram.com/biggypop/

They're clearly smart birds and it's no wonder a bin lid presents little challenge in the wild.

They also have the bite force of a Husky[1], which makes them pretty scary in the wild and not a great choice as a pet for most.

[1]: https://beakcraze.com/can-a-cockatoo-bite-your-finger-off/#H...

See also Snowball the dancing Eleonora cockatoo [1], who has at least 14 distinct dance moves which are shown in the videos in this article [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_(cockatoo)

[2] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/07/study-of-snow...

In Australia it is not called trass, they say rubbish. Any older Aussie will call you out on it.

"It's rubbish mate"

Smithsonian is American so they translate it.

Three years ago, we had a month in Australia, and drove through the SA wine regions and then the coast road to Melbourne. Some time after crossing the border, we stopped at a town Lorne which was much like the previous coastal town, except instead of gulls there were cockatoos everywhere. One flew in close to show interest at chips on my plate, turning its head to size me up - would it be worth making an attempt? I turned towards it, it sidled away awkwardly.

Wow the cockatoos in Lorne really have a reputation. I drove up to Lorne from Melbourne when I was in Australia and one of my most vivid memories is a cockatoo eating bits of pizza out of a bin with pizza sauce smeared up its face.

You mean down to Lorne.

Maker's Muse, a 3d-printing youtube channel has a video where a local and wild cockatoo is given 3d-printed puzzles to solve. It's really worth a watch, it highlights how the bird figures things out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lgWcGIoSVA

I remember seeing a group Cockatoos harassing a guy in the park they would fly from tree to tree following him specifically.

These are some of the most annoying birds here in Oz, probably right behind Magpies.

I've seen them destroy/pull off the outer plastic trim on a car roof like they had pliers for beaks. They're pretty meaty and large and are not scared off easily. Loud as fuck too.

Birds can also be trained for the reverse outcome – to collect trash and deposit it in exchange for seeds.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25180662

I wonder if they will get into collective agreements for seeds. :)

Not only cockatoos, ravens are also quite social.

Around the German area where I live, they team up in "bird gangs" and if the fellow humans were too lazy to properly close the garbage, they will open it, either alone or via team work.

It is not uncommon to eventually find garbage bags scattered around, which they took out while searching for food, thanks to those lazy animals species that failed to properly close the garbage container.

In Germany, we have similar problems, just with crows. In Munich, many trash bins had to be upgraded to be crow (and pigeon) proof, and there have even been occasional attacks - due to covid restrictions, cities became more quiet so the birds nested... and then the restrictions eased and people invaded the areas of the nests.

Australian birds have a huge evolutionary advantage over species in other parts of the world. Modern birds evolved in Australia.

See: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=oJxZCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT11

That's a fascinating book, and led to a fascinating wikipedia rabbit hole, thank you!

Live in Sydney and have had the cockatoos in our bins a few times in the past six months. They’re pretty brazen too, caught them at it a while ago and they carried on like I wasn’t there.

Started leaving a brick on the lid which seems to work.

I tried that, worked for a while then they figured out how to push the rocks/bricks off.

I then tried a short rope which required unhooking to open the bin... they chewed through it immediately.

The only thing that worked in the end was a metal chain secured to a bolt.

Lyre Bird of south australia sings like a chainsaw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSB71jNq-yQ

This reminds me of owls in Futurama: https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Owl

Cockatoos are amazingly smart. They're also very loud.

We also call them "rubbish bins".

Agreed, although this particular type of bin also gets called a "Wheelie Bin" (or perhaps "Wheely Bin"? not sure how to spell it actually..) a lot, at least in South Australia.

Yeah, my rubbish bin's in my kitchen, thank you very much

Where's your bin? "I's been on holidays" No, No. Where's your wheelie bin? "OK, OK, I's really been in gaol"

In the UK they are colloquially referred to as dustbins. My local council formally refers to them as rubbish bins and their contents as rubbish or waste [0]. The term wheelie bin is used when they do in fact have wheels (ours don't). Very few Brits would call them trash bins or trash cans.

[0] https://newforest.gov.uk/rubbish

I'll translate the headline into cockatoo for any of them reading "rèeeeeeèe e eeeeeee eeeeewe reweeeeweeeeaàaaaaaaaaew eeeeaaawwwwwwwwwwwwk"

[Source: I hear them every morning]

Next species for humans to domesticate - cockatoos can be used as automatic bin openers when you need to throw out your garbage!

also, according to the article, they sound like punk rock!

They sure sound like punk rock. I have flocks of them near my house every once in a while and they destroy everything.

Here's a video to give you the idea of what they sound like (in real life it's much worse!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERYamZkj_xQ

If the bin chickens learn how to do this as well, we're doomed.

Relevant song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO-OpFjHRbE

I hope bin chickens are given the right to compete at the Brisbane Olympics

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