On Hearing And Seeing Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoos Poem by Francis Duggan

Their so familiar voices floating to me in the morning breeze
The Yellow tailed black Cockatoos searching for pine cones on the pine trees
You hear them once their weerloo calls with you bound to remain
And there can be no mistaking them when their calls you hear again.

They shred the pine cones to get at the tiny dark seeds which they so love to eat
What us humans find not at all nice to their taste buds taste sweet
And where pine trees are and pine cones lay shredded about the ground
You know that Yellow tailed black Cockatoos have been around.

They are not on the endangered list though in their range scarce to rare
And as they fly you hear them pipe their so familiar air
Big dark brown birds with yellow feathers on their tails weerloo weerloo they cry
And the weerloo is a nickname that to their kind apply.

Large birds in flight they do seem rather ponderous and slow
And weerloo weerloo you hear them cry where ever they do go
With large and powerfull beaks for shredding pine and hakea cones birds I do not often see
And the Yellow tailed black Cockatoos in ways seem strange to me.