COLIN FRIELS: Outback Australia...
.. it doesn't get much harsher than this.
(BIRDS SQUAWK)
Yet in the middle of the desolation,
thousands of cockatoos fly together in a raucous, defiant mob.
They don't just survive - they thrive.
Stretching across the continent.
From the heat of the desert interior to gum tree country...
.. and snow-covered mountains...
.. these outrageously colourful and cocky parrots
have defied the odds...
.. making Australia the land of parrots.
Before Australia had deserts, rainforests covered the continent.
Today, just a few isolated patches remain.
These lush pockets survive
thanks to the tropical monsoons that sweep along the far north coast,
bringing torrential rain.
In these forests,
a brilliant array of parrots adapted crafty beaks
and dexterous toes
to crack the rich bounty of seeds and fruit.
The tiniest of all, the fig-parrot, gorges on fruit bigger than its head.
The general rule for the blokes here
is to be as colourful as needs be to attract a mate
without becoming a neon lure to predators.
The king-parrot is brash.
While the green feathers of the red-cheeked parrot
blend into the foliage.
He relies on his sexy red head and bright beady eyes to get the girls.
But one of the most amazing birds in the world is the eclectus parrot,
because it breaks virtually every rule in the evolutionary rule book.
The male is green,
and the female, red.
So strikingly different are they
that for a long time
people thought that the two must be separate species.
Scientist Rob Heinsohn
set out to discover the secrets of this rare creature.
ROB: Eclectus parrots are the pinnacle of parrot evolution.
Their colouration has gone into uncharted waters.
They are so different, and I just needed to know why.
(BIRDS SQUAWK) OK.
Well, I've disturbed them now,
but I had to do that just to see if they were occupying the hollows.
And one did indeed come out of one of the hollows,
so that's a very good sign at this stage.
And it does mean that it's worth putting a line up
and climbing the tree and having a closer look.
FRIELS: But there was just one problem...
ROB: I have a terrible, terrible fear of heights.
I was getting dizzier by the moment,
but I was also driven by an incredible desire
to see what was inside those hollows.
So I overcame that fear.
I forced myself to stay steady on the rope and to keep climbing.
Hey, Lindsay, we've got eggs.
MAN: Oh, fantastic.
That's absolutely fantastic. It means they're breeding again.
I'll just go up to the other hole and see how they're doing.
I went up 15m, 20m, 25m,
and finally I reached the nest hole I was looking for.
I reached inside, had a look inside,
and there were two beautiful little chicks.
(PARROT SQUAWKS LOUDLY)
Yeah, we've got chicks in here.
Oh, they're beautiful too.
FRIELS: For the last eight years,
Rob has studied the female and all her chicks that live in this hollow.
He measures and marks each one and monitors their growth.
This doesn't seem to upset the chicks
or stop their mum from nurturing them.
ROB: Our number one female, our star performer,
she's just done what she typically does,
is produces healthy little guys like this.
They get a very good start for their long life in the rainforest.
FRIELS: A good hollow is hard to find.
And the female guards hers fiercely.
ROB: We've spent a lot of time just watching her at the nest hollow.
We built hides in neighbouring trees
and we spent a lot of time in the treetops.
And we just watch the female's behaviour.
(BIRD SQUAWKS )
FRIELS: Rob's favourite female is not taking any chances with her hollow
and doesn't budge for the entire 9- month breeding season.
She is totally reliant on the male to bring her food.
ROB: A bit like Meals on Wheels.
She's acting like an invalid, staying at home.
The males are out there doing all of the work.
Coming and going all day long,
purely for the right to regurgitate some food to her.
And, of course, they're hoping to get sex in return.
FRIELS: But this female wasn't just being attended by one male.
She was getting lots of attention.
In fact, seven males were lining up to feed her.
And she was mating with all of them.
ROB: And we worked out that this was, in a way, a form of trickery.
She was trying to give them the idea
that they all had a chance of being the dads.
And that would give them extra incentive
to go off and find the food.
FRIELS: But the DNA tests on the chicks' feathers
reveal something astonishing.
Of the 24 young she's produced in the last eight years,
19 are from the same superstud male.
To complete the picture,
Rob wanted to know how far the males were going on their feeding trips.
ROB: We captured a whole lot of males and we put transmitters on their tails.
We mounted aerials on the wings of the plane,
and we set out and followed them across country from the sky.
FRIELS: Incredibly, the lovesick male gathered food
from a home range of up to 100 square kilometres.
ROB: It also turned out that he was attending more than one female.
And some of them had three or four different females
that they were visiting and feeding, and, indeed, mating with.
So, by following them around the landscape,
we actually caught them out playing a little mating game of their own.
FRIELS: After visiting their girlfriends,
the males fly back to Rob's favourite female.
ROB: The males often come back to the nest tree at the same time.
And when that happens, there's a lot of argy-bargy.
(BIRDS SQUAWK)
FRIELS: With such different lifestyles,
the huge colour difference between the sexes makes a lot of sense.
ROB: The male's green -
very important for them to remain camouflaged
when they go across country getting food from the fruiting trees.
Males seem to use the red under their wings very judiciously
to get the female's attention.
In contrast, the female's red
is the very conspicuous, long-distance signal.
She shines like a beacon, but screams at other birds,
especially females -
“Keep away, this hollow is occupied.
“Don't bother coming near because I will beat you up. ”
FRIELS: No other bird in the world mates like this.
It's a sex strategy
that's been perfected over an incredibly long time
in these ancient forests.
While the eclectus were doing their thing,
elsewhere on the continent dramatic changes gave rise
to a whole new range of parrots.
Millions of years ago,
most of Australia's rainforests gradually dried
and became open woodlands.
Many parrots were able to adapt to the new and tougher conditions.
To survive on the desert edge,
red-tailed black-cockatoos stick to the few tree-lined watercourses.
As the sun drops, the birds arrive from all directions.
With breeding hollows scarce, most of these cookies are single.
The local watering hole is their pick-up joint,
and the evening quickly turns into a boisterous party.
(BIRDS SQUAWK)
Younger birds flirt by displaying the colour banding on their tails
and erecting their crests.
These fancy pop-up crests
are what distinguish cockatoos from the other parrots.
(BIRDS SQUAWK)
These opportunistic cookies thrived
and spread out as the continent dried.
During the last ice age,
winds lashed the land and heaped sand into vast dunes.
Grasses and shrubs spread across the desert,
producing an abundance of seeds.
The galahs were quick to take advantage of the new foods.
They were not fussy eaters,
and went just about everywhere eating almost anything.
Today, there's barely a patch of Australia
without these extroverted cookies.
But the opportunistic galahs were not the only ones to try new foods.
The less common Major Mitchell cockatoos
have recently acquired a taste for paddymelons.
These inquisitive birds have little trouble
working out some fancy footwork to break into the fruit.
Their new cuisine arrived as part of an exotic smorgasbord.
150 years ago, cattlemen pushed their way to the desert centre.
And wherever they went,
they brought a whole range of new opportunities for parrots to exploit.
Paddymelons were introduced to feed the camels of the Afghan traders
as they travelled the outback supplying the isolated properties.
It was a tough life for the early pioneers.
And frequent droughts made it hard to make a living.
Adding to the farmers' woes,
the cockatoos soon worked out that where there was stock...
.. there was stockfeed.
All this free fast food
made life pretty cushy for generations of cockatoos
and their numbers boomed.
(BIRDS SQUAWK)
And the good times kept on rolling for the cockatoos and parrots...
.. when the settlers found underground water and pumped it to the surface.
Man-made waterholes helped parrots spread and survive
where they couldn't have done before.
Ringneck parrots...
.. budgerigars...
.. pale-headed rosellas all come in to drink in family groups.
Mulga parrots can live in waterless areas
but no-one in the outback turns down a free drink.
Rain rarely falls in the Australian deserts.
Droughts can last for over a decade.
Waterholes turn to mud...
.. leaving a freshwater crayfish exposed...
.. and an easy target.
The wildlife has adapted to survive the times
when the rivers vanish into puddles...
.. and the dams are turned to cracked and useless crusts.
The air crackles in the heat.
Crops are wiped from the earth.
And the parched interior waits for rains that never seem to come.
The first sign that the drought might break
can be a warming of the western Pacific Ocean.
Cyclones form by sucking up heat and moisture from the sea
as they power in towards the coast.
Winds of up to 250km/h shred the shoreline.
As the cyclone heads inland,
it weakens and turns into a huge rain depression.
The deluge sweeps thousands of kilometres
across the centre of the continent.
And cockatiels celebrate with a rain dance.
(BIRDS SQUAWK)
Within hours, every riverbed fills with life-giving water.
The torrent charges through the narrow gorges of the ranges
eroding the land.
Ribbons of nourishment snake across the continent
towards the parched centre.
In the Channel Country,
the creeks fan out across previously barren flood plains.
And for a brief time the desert is given the kiss of life.
In a flash, desert plants produce vast quantities of seed.
Somehow waterbirds sense the transformation
and travel vast distances.
Fish breed up in the newly formed lakes
providing a feast for growing cormorants.
Brolgas arrive in Search of the roots of sedges.
(BIRDS SQUAWK)
And when native grasses start to seed,
the scene is set for the arrival of the stars of the Australian desert...
.. the budgerigar.
We keep them in cages,
but in the wild, budgies roam the vast outback.
When it rains, flocks swoop in from everywhere.
No-one knows how they navigate.
Perhaps they home in on
the low-frequency sounds of thunderstorms
thousands of miles away.
Their aim is to breed furiously while the conditions are right.
Along the gorges of the Central Ranges,
every tree hollow is alive with the flutterings of courtship.
(BIRDS cl-CHIRP)
The river bank is perfect for a dinner date.
In the budgie mating game,
you need to be camouflaged while feeding on the ground,
but still spunky enough to impress a potential mate.
And the way budgies see each ether's feathers
is different to the way we see them.
We see in red, green and blue.
But budgies have a fourth cell in their eye
that enables them to see ultraviolet.
When UV rays hit some parts of the budgie's plumage,
they give off a reflective glow.
It's a fair bet the female will choose the brightest, sexiest male.
Especially if he can fight too.
(BIRDS SQUAWK)
With his rival dispatched,
the male can now get down to the serious business
of wooing the female.
Not only do budgies have highly reflective UV markings...
.. some parts of their plumage actually become fluorescent.
Their necks and heads in particular.
The feathers don't lie.
To make sexy feathers, the male must be healthy and parasite-free.
These markings announce, “My genes are great. Choose me. ”
And if she does, he treats her to a slap-up meal
by regurgitating food into her mouth.
Over a few days, she'll lay about six eggs
that will hatch in just a couple of weeks.
She feeds her blind, naked chicks a rich milk-like liquid.
They grow rapidly.
Within 12 days their wing feathers come through.
And after only four weeks,
they're almost ready to leave the nest.
Incredibly, these chicks will be ready to breed
in just 60 days after hatching.
It's a superquick turnaround
to get the young out of the nest while the going is good.
But it could all be over in an instant.
At two metres, the perentie is Australia's largest lizard.
(BIRDS SQUAWK)
A tireless predator, it covers great distances in search of food.
The perentie tracks its prey by sight
and by detecting scent molecules that it picks up on its tongue.
(BIRDS SQUAWK)
In the air, they're not nearly so vulnerable.
Synchronised squadrons fly low between the mulga trees.
The colours on their backs camouflage them against the grasses.
Where the budgies go, the birds of prey follow.
What the hunter is looking for is a weak link.
But it's not always life and death for Australia's parrots.
Galahs seem to have plenty of time for clowning around.
In some years, budgies breed up into such numbers
that they become, for a time, Australia's most numerous parrot.
Accounts by early settlers tell of flocks so big
that they blackened the sky.
But the good times can only last for so long.
And as the country dries out again, breeding comes to a halt.
Having raised several generations, the budgies disperse,
resuming their nomadic life in the desert
waiting for the next big rains.
Whenever that may be.
In contrast to the unpredictable droughts of the interior,
the seasons along the southern edge of Australia are far more regular.
In winter, Antarctic blasts of cold air
bring snow to Australia's highest mountains.
Wombats can forage in any weather.
But it's not great weather for parrots.
There is one that manages to survive above the snowline.
Green rosellas fuel up on alpine berries against the winter blizzards.
Down at sea level, the cold fronts bring gale-force winds.
Great for surfers...
.. treacherous for almost anything else.
If you're a rock parrot,
you must learn to like your plants heavily salted.
Living in the salt-spray zone is not an easy life,
but these hardy parrots are battlers.
Things get a little easier in the nearby coastal heath.
This environment is richer, attracting gang-gang cockatoos.
Like most cockatoos, gang-gangs are left-footed,
gripping onto their wind-blown perch with their right leg,
while holding the seed pod with their left.
Yellow-tailed black-cockatoos also favour their left foot
when tackling the large seed-bearing cones of the banksia tree.
It's a tricky operation that combines brute force
to slice through the tough exterior,
and a delicate touch to extract and shell the seeds that lie within.
But the very plants that these parrots need to survive
must be burnt in order to regenerate.
All this takes is a thunderstorm.
(THUNDER RUMBLES)
And the Australian bush burns astonishingly fiercely.
Banksia fruits need intense heat to release their seeds.
Hakea cones split.
Gumnuts drop to the forest floor.
Oil in the eucalyptus leaves is as explosive as petrol.
No other continent burns so dramatically as Australia.
Some fires consume millions of hectares.
But within hours...
.. currawongs are poking through the ashes.
And crimson rosellas that survived the inferno
are feasting on roasted eucalypt seeds.
Just a few days later eucalypts sprout green shoots.
Within a few years the forests recover.
And there's plenty of food.
So it's time for crimson rosellas to start breeding again.
With their bright plumage,
parrots seem to be screaming out to potential predators,
“Free food - come and get it. ”
But whether you're a budgie, an eclectus, a rosella,
or just about any other parrot,
you have to take colourful risks in the mating game.
Sometimes you can have the best of both worlds.
These gaudy birds are, in fact,
safely camouflaged by their leaf-like shape and green backs.
Although they haven't quite mastered a disguise
for the Australian suburbs.
Ever since Australians
started planting native trees in their cities,
food is laid on.
And parrots happily accept the invitation.
Some overstay their welcome.
With too much time on its hands,
this cockatoo gets stuck into an electric insulator.
While the maniacal corella will attack everything in its path.
Even bitumen road.
And then the neighbour's lawn.
But such destructiveness is minor
compared with what they do to farmers.
And the cockatoos love the modern cropping practices.
A generation ago, Lakeland was open to intensive farming.
It was ideal country for maize and peanuts.
And as the crops grew,
the sulphur-crested cockatoos moved in.
In just a week the birds can inflict tens of thousands of dollars damage
to the maize of farmer Darryn Hoskins.
(Darryn whistles) Suzie.
DARRYN: The numbers have bred up over the years.
The main reason for that is 'cause in their natural habitat
they haven't got a good amount of food all year round.
Where, in the valley here in Lakeland,
even in the driest part of the year, in August, September,
when it's extremely dry, there's still crop residue on the ground.
And the birds have got a feed all year round.
With that they can continue to breed 12 months of the year,
no problems at all.
There's food and there's water here on hand, so they've got it laid on.
They think it's terrific.
FRIELS: When they've finished with the maize,
the cookies head for the peanut fields
where they pick apart the hay bales.
(BIRDS SQUAWK)
Red-tailed black-cockatoos join in the fun.
So, how does the farmer try and control them?
DARRYN: Basically, just driving around
and shooting at 'em with a high-powered rifle.
Just the noise alone is enough to scare 'em, or even toot the horn.
But it's a full-time job for two, three months of the year nonstop.
Basically, all you're doing is just driving around
following the cockatoos from one paddock to another
until the day warms up.
It gets too warm for 'em, so they go back and roost in the trees.
Then they come back again and commence their feeding.
Then we commence to chasing again.
Which is bloody annoying.
(Cocks gun and fires)
(BIRDS SQUAWK)
FRIELS: Further south, in the wheat country,
it's a different cockatoo.
But it's the same story.
In small doses, little corellas are a delightful and entertaining bird.
But when flocks of up to 30,000 marauding birds
descend on your harvest,
well, you can understand why a farmer might be a little upset.
The grain is stored in giant bunkers and protected by thick canvas.
But the canvas is no match for their sharp beaks.
And having feasted on the main course,
it's off to the nearest vineyard for a spot of dessert.
For lychee farmers, rainbow Lorikeets are the enemy.
The farmers spend every daylight hour patrolling their orchard
to keep the birds at bay.
Like children with cupcakes, they take a bite from each one,
spoiling them for everybody else.
For the farmer, it's a race to see who gets to the ripest fruit first.
And the birds are winning.
But not all farmers are at war with parrots.
A Queensland cattle station
has become an unlikely refuge for a rare turquoise beauty...
.. the golden-shouldered parrot.
Last century, bird fanciers trapped these prized parrots
and robbed their nests.
This plunder left the species hanging on by a thread.
To make matters worse,
these picky parrots have very particular lifestyle requirements.
For a start, a broody couple need an airconditioned termite mound
to burrow into and make a nest.
They've made Sue Shephard's cattle property home.
And every breeding season for 30 years
she's been riding hundreds of kilometres
checking every mound for chicks.
In half the occupied mounds,
Sue has found the nest floor covered with a grub
that is unique to the nests of golden-shouldered parrots.
The grub belongs to a moth
that synchronises the hatching of her babies with that of the chicks.
The grubs eat the chicks' poo,
which seems to suit everyone.
Meanwhile, the chicks' parents go looking for food together.
When they return, Dad flies to the mound to check that all is safe.
(Chirps)
And to let the young ones know that it's mealtime.
He stands guard while the female comes down to feed the chicks.
(CHICKS SQUAWK)
An exhausting schedule when your chicks need four or five feeds a day.
Dad's job is to coax the 5-week-old chicks
out of their cosy nest and into the big, bad world.
It's the dry season,
which means it's hard for the young birds
to find food in the thick grass.
So Sue helps nature along,
burning the bush and exposing the next meal.
Sue's property is a haven for the golden-shouldered parrot,
and her efforts may be the only thing standing between them and extinction.
Even further north, in the remote woodlands of Cape York Peninsula,
there's a parrot that's intrigued scientists for a century.
Steve Murphy came here as a young biologist 10 years ago.
His quest was to unlock the secrets
of the world's most spectacular cockatoo -
the palm cockatoo.
Few people have ever seen this bird.
STEVE: Look here. Here he comes.
FRIELS: The palm cockatoo dates back tens of millions of years
to when Australia was covered in rainforest.
He's the grandaddy of them all.
Little was known of this mysterious bird
until Steve Murphy began his study.
And the only way to find them in this rainforest is to mimic their calls.
(Calls)
(Squawks) (Squawks)
(Mimics call)
(Calls)
(Whistles)
STEVE: They've got a huge repertoire of calls that they use in display.
(Calls)
The 'hello' call they make is part of the display.
It seems to be made almost as if
they're saying hello to their partner
or their neighbouring cockatoos.
FRIELS: Unlike other cockatoos, palm cockatoos don't live in flocks.
They pair up with a mate and seem to stick with them for life.
And they can live for up to 90 years.
One cockatoo in captivity had her first chick at 54.
But to get the girl,
the male must be a man of property
with a portfolio of good nesting hollows.
And if he wants any chance of mating,
she must be persuaded that he's strong enough
to build her several magnificent nests.
STEVE: All the elements of a palm cockatoo display
are designed to draw attention to that massive beak.
The blushing of the cheek patch, the wing spreading -
which makes them bigger -
it's all designed to show other cockatoos that they're strong.
And the pinnacle of their strength is in their beak.
FRIELS: Essentially, he is trying to prove that he is a blue-chip investment,
and that she can feel comfortable putting all her eggs in his basket.
STEVE: They join up every morning and afternoon at these nest hollows.
And they catch up on the day's events,
and it really does sound like you're listening to
an old married couple sometimes.
I mean, the analogy continues.
It's just like humans
and the pride that humans have in their houses.
Palm cockatoos are exactly the same.
But the most amazing display of all
is when males bring back to the nest a small stick.
And they actually drum on the side of the nest.
FRIELS: Maybe it's because palm cockatoos live so long
that they have time to learn so much.
But it's a rare thing anywhere in the animal world
to see a tool being used quite this deliberately.
STEVE: I think it's very likely
that the female watches these drumming displays
and can tell something about either the male
or the nest tree at which he's performing.
You know, there's something that she's picking up
in the way that the drumming sound resonates inside the hollow.
We don't really know, but, I mean, she watches very intently.
FRIELS: The choosy males will try two or three different drumsticks
before they settle on one that they really like.
STEVE: When they actually perform the drumming display at the nest,
it does seem to have a rhythm.
But when he's finished with it,
he'll often sit at the edge of the hollow and splinter up the stick
and add it to the nesting platform that's inside the hollow.
FRIELS: If the female is impressed,
she will walk down and join him at the entrance of the nest
to see if it's good enough to breed in.
With the hollow approved, they can fly off to have a morning snack.
The local birds gather at trees that are in fruit.
STEVE: That really powerful beak that palm cockatoos have,
which is by far the biggest beak of any of the cockatoos,
it allows them to eat foods that other cockatoos
and other animals in general just simply can't access.
I think palm cockatoos are very intelligent.
You've only gotta watch a pair courting at their nest,
or a male fashioning a drumstick
to realise that there is complicated thought
going in that big head of theirs.
FRIELS: Of course, these regal palm cockatoos are not the only clever ones.
All parrots are smart.
Whereas most birds only learn when they're young,
parrots continue, through long lives,
to accumulate knowledge and pass it on to their mob.
Combine this brain power with their crafty beaks and agile toes,
and it's almost as though parrots
were preadapted for this changing continent.
From the drying of the land to the arrival of Europeans,
these brightest of birds have thrived.
.. making Australia the land of parrots.