Turns out, I've got one thing wrong my whole life. Bird watching.
It seems obvious to me that this is an activity which involves using the eyes. How wrong I was. At a recent World Science Festival session in Brisbane, Professor Hugh Possingham revealed twitching was about listening more than watching. That's a bit unfortunate when you consider I capture the world around me with a camera not a tape recorder.
He also said that there's one bird more than any other than will overwhelm your recording ... the cockatoo. The Disney films and picture books of our youth lied to us about sweet melodic bird calls. The noise I heard in Shaw Park this afternoon was worse than the combined efforts of a Year 1 recorder and violin ensemble. Those things are raucous. It's little wonder the collective noun for cockatoos includes a pandemonium or just a crackle.
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