“Just three of them seemed unusual at the time. “I wrote in my notebook in 1985: ‘Three sulphur-crested cockatoos seen in Catalina Park (in Katoomba)’,” Carol says.

Though they are natives to the region, their numbers have exploded to unusual levels in the last 10 years. Throughout the Blue Mountains these cockatoos – which thrive in areas of human habitation – are booming. But now it’s impossible to spend time in the Blue Mountains without seeing flocks of them.” “When I first came to live here in 1983, sulphur-crested cockatoos were a rare sight. If the outcome out here is that we are losing the normal dawn and dusk chorus, then “that’s a profound tragedy. “The cockatoos screeching at dawn and dusk drowns out the fainter, more subtle noise of smaller birds,” says Carol, which may be forcing those that rely on vocal communication to find quieter habitats away from the cockatoos. Drowning out the dawn chorus of other birds Occasionally, in between their calls we can hear robins, cuckoos and currawongs. Not that it seems to matter how quiet we are the cockatoos screech overhead, their yellow crests catching the last of the sun, their white wings stretched wide. We try to muffle all sound as we peer through our binoculars, scouring the trees for birds.

We look up at the sandstone cliffs as it becomes darker. In the dirt there are v-shaped scratchings, meaning that a lyrebird had been here very recently. Ferns, blue gums and tall, pink-trunked angophoras line the sandy track. After a short walk down into the valley, we come to a creek that’s home to some scarcely seen platypus.

Gang gang cockatoos puns