Flick(er)ring Cockatoos: New Media as Zoopoetic Space

Abstract

A gregarious bird named Samson is a permanent tenant of Kaarakin-a conservation centre near Perth, Western Australia, devoted to the rehabilitation of the region's endangered black cockatoos (Kaarakin Black Cockatoo Centre, 'About Us'). Born in the bushland outside the sanctuary fences, he will never be reintroduced to the wild because of the severity of injuries incurred in a motor vehicle collision. As we cautiously enter his foliage-filled enclosure, he swoops instantaneously to the shoulders of the three men in our tour group-including me. Although a 'dominant' cockatoo kept separate from other male birds to maintain peaceful ornithological relations at the centre, Samson has a surprising fondness for male humans. Our volunteer guide tells us that this affectionate performance is well-known at Kaarakin, as she chuckles lightly at the black cockatoo's proven lack of heed for the opposite sex of our species. The affable creature's pleasure is unmistakable: he innervates his crest feathers, tiptoes up my arm and behind my neck, agitates my brimmed hat with his curved proboscis, and then trickles like a rivulet down my outstretched limb. Settling momentarily on my hand, he then whooshes off to his perch, with a heaviness of flight and an air of determined content-as ancient and choreographic as the habitat of which he is still part, despite his captivity.