Bloody Cockies

I am really cranky!

Bloody Cockatoos have devoured most of my mandarins and tangelos.

And they have chomped off so many branches and even whole leader stems.

I saw some of these half eaten ones by the road and thought that some kids must have thrown them out of the windows.

Then I started to see them out the back.

That's birds!

Crows or cockatoos

But the chomping is definitely the cockies!

Half eaten, and of course right next to the dog chewed safety glasses!

And I found so many chomped off stems.

Just left laying on the ground.

Check out the chompy rough raggedy trunk.

I will have to trim that up.

I should have known after last years chompfest.

Even though those trees are going OK.

So I've hatched a devious plan.

We've had a fake plastic hawk hanging in the carport for many many years.

It was originally put up in the rafters to stop a peacock from roosting on the Volvo.

The peacock is long gone.

But the plastic hawk was still hanging.

So I took it down and got some of that plastic cardboard from the shop.

We sell dog biscuits and they had one of those big plastic signs laying around.

You can just see the back of it in this hopeless photo- it is in the upper right hand side.

They were BOSS biscuits.

I had my daughter trace around the old hawk/eagle and then I cut it out.

She coloured one side in with a black sharpie and drew a big eye on it.

Then I climbed onto the roof of the Ute and flung an old dish brush with rope attached over a high branch.

Then tied the cut out bird onto the rope.

It flaps and swings in the breeze.

So I put another one (the original plastic one) out the front of the house.

Where some evil varmint is chomping off my agapanthus bulbs.

We made 3 of these big birds!

One will probably go back into the carport as some little willy wagtails are perching in there and pooping on the car.

You can only just see this one hanging in the tree.

(ignore my dead looking winter lawn)

It is warming up and will be all bright and green in a few weeks!

I think I may have worked out how to bully those crows and cockies and other destructive birds.

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When I came home at lunch time today

(to put some washing on so that I can get a bit ahead- nice way to spend a lunch break eh?)

There were 2 turtles on the road- only about 20 metres apart.

I had to manoeuvre like a rally car driver to avoid running over them, and I thought that any trucks coming by wouldn't be able to do that.

so I pulled up and moved them off the road.

That was my good deed for the day. 

Except when I came home after work, just 2 hours later, one was squished on the road.

And I thought I had it all worked out which direction he was going in.

I love these long necked turtles/tortoises.

I used to have one as a kid. My father drilled a hole in the back of his shell and he had a chain attached through the hole.

Nowadays I think that is a bit cruel. But back then I loved it.

One day he just got loose, the chain had been wearing through the shell. I never saw him again.

As a family, we have saved a couple and put them in our aviary to recover, but we always take them down to the river and release them.

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The pruning hasn't begun yet.

But I have been to the nursery!!!!

Have a great end of the week.