The bird in the photo is a long bill corella and his name is Gilly. He has helped me with my recovery and is and has been my very special friend since we came across him earlier this year.
Gilly is about 18 months old and as you can see is a very cute little fellow and highly intelligent but he has never been out in the wild.
On Tuesday afternoon, he did a Houdini and got himself out of his cage - it was my fault as I forgot to put the padlock on his cage after transferring him from his aviary where he spends to the day to his night cage - the little beggar comes in with us at night since if we leave him in the aviary, he becomes a noisy little bugger at sunrise.
As you can imagine, my wife and I were distraught.
Gilly talks a little and we have taught him to whistle, not the most melodic, but he knows how to do it to get our attention.
We live near a river in the Gold Coast Hinterland, and we know there is a flock of corellas in the area. We were hopeful, that he may have joined up with them having flown off with the flock as we feared over his ability to look after himself on his own.
We know about the flock as they visit us daily - they probably come to visit some of the other birds we look after and rehabilitate - my wife is invoved with Wildcare.
Following two sleepless nights, I got up early at 2.15am on Thursday morning, prepared some lost notices and at daybreak went out and started putting them up on telegraph poles in our area and near the river where we believe the flock goes to at night. At 7.00am I ran out of sticky tape so came home planning to go out to buy tape etc later in the morning and continue putting notices up.
At 7.45am, we received a phone call from someone in the area who had seen one of my lost notices. She told us she saw a bird that looked very similar to the one in the photo on the notice "talking" and going up to people near the walking path at the river and not far from where people exercise their dogs.
Needless to say, my wife and I bolted down there, and there he was looking like a lost sheep, walking on the footpath trying to avoid people walking their dogs.
When I went up to him, he didn't flinch and was happy to let me pick him up and when we got him back home was very happy to be given food. He spent the rest of the day in his cage on a stand behind me and couldn't get enough attention, wanting a lot of touchy, feely activity.
Gilly is doing well and had a good night's rest Thursday night, although he has been a bit subdued since returning home, probably still getting over his ordeal, he has settled back into his routine.
He's a great tongue kisser, you know....and he really has been making up for lost time sharing his affections with both my wife and myself since we got him back and I must say, getting him back is the best thing that has happened to us in recent times.
Anyway, the two of us had a bit more drama Thursday afternoon.
I was outside playing with Gilly and my wife was looking after our birds when all of a sudden we heard an almighty thump from theaviary that holds 7 lorrikeets that we are rehabilitating.
On the side of the aviary there was a 6 foot carpet python snake looking for a way in and the poor lorris were scared shitless.
Big brave me, using a broom stick, got the python to wrap itself around the stick and then I flicked it over the fence, just wanting to get it away from our aviaries.
On walking around the side of the house to see where it had landed, we were shocked and surprised to see it had landed a foot or two from a neighbour walking on the grass in the street alongside our house.
Needless to say, the poor chap almost had apoplexy, what, with a 6 ft snake falling from the sky and almost landing on him.
It really was one of those situations where you had to be there and see what had happened to appreciate the shock, horror and humour of the situation.
A few minuts later, someone visiting in the street who knew what to do and seeing what was happening, picked up the snake and said he would take it up to Hinze Dam to release it - god bless him. Here is a photo of the snake with the bloke who caught it for us.
Been an exciting week, but enough excitement to last me for quite some time.
P.S. Just wanted to add, that by the end of the telling of the snake tale to others last night and this morning, the 6 ft python has morphed into a 35 foot monster with a five foot head and a body that had wrapped itself around the aviary five times.
Dani
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