Karaway the Cockatoo and Other Nature Stories

By Edward S Sorenson

"Karaway the Cockatoo and Other Nature Stories" is a collection of four animal stories by the Australian writer and poet Edward Sorenson. He was famous for stories featuring Australian wildlife. In this collection, one finds some of his best stories: "Karaway, the Cockatoo," "Kojurrie, the Goanna," "Bluey, the Wren," and "Booraby, the Koala."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Nov 9, 2021
• ISBN: 4066338096388

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Edward S Sorenson

Karaway the Cockatoo and Other Nature Stories

Published by Good Press, 2022

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EAN 4066338096388

Table of Contents

Karaway, The Cockatoo

PART I.

PART II.

Kojurrie, The Goanna

PART I.

PART II.

Bluey, The Wren

PART I.

PART II.

Booraby, The Koala

PART I.

PART II.

THE END

Karaway, The Cockatoo

Table of Contents

PART I.

Table of Contents

MANY foolish little birds try to fly before they are strong enough, and so flutter to the ground, where they become easy prey to enemies. Karaway, the White Cockatoo, wasn't going to make similar mistakes. Barring accidents, he had a long life before him. Was not his great-great-grandmother over a hundred years old? There was, indeed, no need to hurry at the beginning. He was so well feathered, when his mother coaxed him out of the hollow spout at the top of a big red gum tree, that from the ground he and his parent looked as much alike as two peas. From an ugly, clumsy-looking, almost naked, dark-skinned infant, who nodded and rocked his big head and squawked all day, he had become a sprightly and elegant bird.

He moved along the limb with claw and beak. The great distance to the ground made him afraid. The presence of hawks made him still more afraid. Several of them he knew well, for he had watched them secretly from the seclusion he had just left. From a top branch, directly above him, Gooloowee, the White Hawk, looked hungrily at him. From a neighboring tree Wolga, the Blue Falcon, eyed him with a fierce stare; whilst Bilbil, the Sparrow Hawk, was perched beyond, and Jilli-jilli, the common Kite, soared overhead.

In looking up at the latter he almost lost his balance. In a panic he moved along the limb again with claw and beak, and cried to his mother. She still moved on, and, when she could get no farther, flew to another branch. Up he climbed, but he uttered all the while a monotonous, whining cry that had earned him more than one severe smack from his mother's hard bill in the nest. Then she flew to another tree. How he was to get there he didn't know. He raised his crest, stretched his neck, and fidgeted round and round and squawked. There was no branch or vine by which he could connect with her. Evidently he had to trust himself to the air the same as she did. After all, it looked easy; she just opened her wings, flapped them up and down, and away she went. Well—

Taking a tight grip of the limb with his strong claws, he spread his wings and exercised them vigorously. Harder and harder he strove till he almost tore his claws from the wood. In this way he tested their strength and lifting power. A dozen times he was on the point of making the plunge, and each time he barely mustered sufficient courage to let go with his feet. When he finally did so, he flew quite masterly, and alighted successfully in the other tree, where he proudly erected his yellow crest and joyously cackled, as much as to say, Did you see that?

Karaway was twenty inches in length, plump and symmetrical, and the whitest and the largest of the white cockatoos. His elongated, recurved, occipital crest was a beautiful deep yellow, and he was sometimes called the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo. In addition to this conspicuous helmet, his general snow-white plumage was relieved with pale yellow on the ear coverts, in the centre of the under surface of the wings, and on the basal portion of the inner webs of the tail feathers. His bill was black, powerful, and abruptly curved. His eyes were black; his feet were greyish-brown.

By degrees, he made his way to the side of a quiet lagoon, where, in low, bushy trees, a small company of his kind were camping during the midday hours. They were silent, but not inactive, for they had a mischievous habit, at such times, of snipping leaves and branchlets off the trees, especially off the wild apple, just to test their bills.

Karaway was no sooner amongst them than he was engaged in the same mischief. It was just what he had been wanting for the purpose of exercising his strong bill. The inclination to bite and saw was irresistible—a habit peculiar to almost the whole of the parrot tribe. In numerous places throughout the vast forest, his associates betrayed their camps by the leaves and bark they stripped off, and the scars they left on the branches. Still, though they were immensely superior in numbers, the damage they did was comparatively insignificant to that done by the black cockatoos.

These dusky relatives, numbering seven species in all, moved in small cohorts. They fed on eucalypti seeds, banksia, wood grubs and caterpillars, and, despite