• In high school, cockatoos always clustered around the lockers (which were outside, of course), so they could eat any food someone had foolishly left unattended. There was a story going round that the cockatoos had learnt to undo the zips on backpacks so they could get at the food. Admittedly, I never saw that with my own two eyes; however, I do know that they had learnt to puncture plastic bags so they could eat any food inside.
• Later on, in university, I had a habit of eating lunch outside in a grassy area. One day, a couple of cockatoos landed near me, looking at my food; this continued until about 8–10 cockatoos were clustered around me, all carefully eyeing my food. They then started to move forward — slowly, so as not to frighten me off — until they were all just a couple of centimetres away from me. Quite sensibly, I had by this time placed the lid on my container (though foolishly had not locked it in place) to stop them from eating it. I thus felt safe in moving away from all these nasty-looking birds — at which point, one of them reached out and tipped the container over, so the lid fell off and the food fell out! (I actually have a picture of the moment.) Of course I quickly gathered up the spilt food, but they did still get a bit to eat. It annoyed me, of course, but I am still impressed by the intelligence required to realise that this is the best way of getting food out of a box with a lid.
• At the same university, I once saw a cockatoo creep up to an unsuspecting man sitting on a bench and have a nibble of his pant leg! It’s unclear why it would do such a thing, but I’ve since come to the conclusion that it was simply curious to know what clothing tastes like.
Moral of the story: do not underestimate Australian wildlife, for it is cleverer than you would expect.