A couple of posts back, I described a lyrebird who took a bath in a stream, preened extensively, and then set himself up on a tree overlooking the Jamieson Valley in Australia’s Blue Mountains. I compared the overlook to a cloud, in the light of the soft pillow of needles from casuarina trees on the ground. I went back to the same place the next week, hoping for lyrebirds, and found in those trees a pair of the greatest of all lovers of casuarinas – Glossy Black Cockatoos.

These are large parro...