Gang Gang gooly gooly gooly gooly. Watch 'im ...

Here's the world's most gentle parrot, Canberra's own Gang Gang Cockatoo.

No raucous screeching with this little fella, just a lilting creak that sounds like a cork being drawn from a wine bottle (not my description - from some book called Wild About Canberra).

We only got to see the likes of him down at our home, near Lake Burley Griffin, in the winter time when it was too cold for him in the Brindabella Mountains. Come summer time, he'd migrate back to altitude to escape the heat.

Rainbow nation

Finally, finally, with the onset of marginally warmer weather, and with the gum trees and bottle brushes in bloom, I've been able to snap this, the Rainbow Lorikeet.

He was sprung in the wilds of Osborne Park, a light industrial area northwest of Perth city.

Lories don't really belong in Western Australia, having established around Perth from aviary escapees that were lured here from their native home 3500 kms away on the golden fringe of the Pacific.

They're considered pests in WA, outmuscling 28s and other peace-loving parrots for scarce tree hollows. But hey, their drunken antics brighten up a damp day when you're sitting in the Subaru outside a bead shop waiting for your wife to make her mind up between pink and puce.

Waxing lyrical

Known to Hazel and I as Waxy Balls, this ridiculous beast was the mother of Woo and the wife of mighty Behemoth.

The most inquisitive of the myriad parrots that would drop by our Canberra verandah, she would often crane her neck to check out what was going on inside our unit.

And like most sulphur crests, she didn't mind a fang.

Birdbrains

Our verandah back in Canberra was known as the menagerie, for obvious reasons.

Kea!

An extensive search of our holiday snaps has uncovered this, the world's only alpine parrot, the cheeky Kea from New Zealand's south island.

Snapped in January 2004 in the mountains near Homer Tunnel, this fellow came to us fresh from picking rubber off some poor sod's roof rack. After charming Hazel and I for a while, he hopped away to fang an apple core somebody had thrown on the side of the road.

Possibly the world's most intelligent parrot, the Kea is still pretty loopy by primate standards.

A right galah

This pink and grey was sprung in our backyard this evening doing what pink and greys do best - fanging.

The poor halfwit was so intent on fanging that it didn't notice the stealthy approach of Pounce! the cat.

Luckily the clicking of camera shutter disturbed the clicking of citrus seed and a flurry of fur and feather was narrowly averted.

Holding parrot

This fella dangles from the ceiling of Hazel's and my shed.

He used to guard the weedy Wisteria on our balcony in Canberra from marauding sulphur crests, but now we're in Western Australia he lives more sedately.

If you pull the string under his gut, his wings flap. Seeing as there's not too many sulphur crests around here, and he now lives under a roof, his string only gets pulled every now and then by hand out of love, rather than hourly by beak for torment.

Picture by Hazelblackberry