Sulphur-crested Sex Change...

Hmmm. Bet the title of this post got you interested eh? I was at the BBEVS Surgery last Saturday to do my monthly consult clinics and I overheard one of the most amusing discussions I have yet to encounter about parrots. The two people engaged in the following banter weren't clients of mine - they were in to see the vets and `met' at the reception upon bill payment time. One was a dog owner and the other was the owner of a Sulphur-crested Cockatoo. The Sulphur was perched very proudly on the shoulders of the owner. It was attracting quite a deal of attention as it was sporting a rather regal looking elizabethan collar, no doubt to keep it from picking at whatever body part had just been treated as it otherwise looked pretty good! Here's a brief snapshot of the conversation...

Dog owner: `Oh - what a lovely Cockatoo!'

Cocky Owner: `Thankyou. Yes. He's a beautiful bird'

Dog Owner: `My old Aunt used to have a Cocky as a pet. Had it for years. I used to look after it every now and then'

Cocky Owner: `Really?'

Dog Owner: `Yeah. Didn't like men but - hated 'em. They can be like that you know'

Cocky Owner: `I've heard'

Dog Owner: `Yeah - and you know what else?'

Cocky Owner: `What?'

Dog Owner: `They can change their sex - like go from being a boy to a girl or whatever'

Cocky Owner: `Really?'

Dog Owner: `Yep. They need to do it in the wild. When we had to look after my Aunt's cocky I read up on 'em. Found out that if there's a shortage of one sex or the other in the wild they can just change so they can breed'

Cocky Owner: `Oh?'

Dog Owner: `Uh huh. You'd be amazed 'eh. Amazing birds. Always wanted one myself - too noisy but 'eh?'

Cocky Owner: `Mmmm - can be'

You probably think the above is a joke but I'm serious - that's almost verbatim what was said. As funny as it obviously is to think that anyone could believe or even think that a Cockatoo can just `change its sex' in the wild, it got me thinking about the level of misinformation that is out there about parrots and how so many of these old ways of thinking persist within the birdkeeping community. Most of it, to be honest, is pretty harmless. Sometimes however, clearly outdated yet very much perpetuated thinking about parrots can potentially be very damaging. I'll save a good example of that for a future blog post but for now, if you think you're probably holding on to a few old school lines of thinking about your birds well, as my teenage students like to tell me, `time to get updated' :-)

Wild Sulphur-crested Cockatoo foraging. Male or Female? Depends... apparently.