Like a scene from Hitchcock’s The Birds, Aldinga’s plague of brutal corellas is trashing the town, writes Rex Jory

DUSK in the little town of Aldinga on the Fleurieu Peninsula is astonishing. Every night since Christmas tens of thousands of white corellas or bare-eyed cockatoos have descended on Aldinga in plague numbers.

6/3/14 Corellas at Aldinga Oval. Corellas at Aldinga. Corellas have decended on Aldinga and leave feathers and droppings all over the town. Picture Roger Wyman

DUSK in the little town of Aldinga on the Fleurieu Peninsula is astonishing. Every night since Christmas tens of thousands of white corellas or bare-eyed cockatoos have descended on Aldinga in plague numbers.

It’s like a scene from the Alfred Hitchcock thriller, The Birds. It is an extraordinary and frightening sight magnified by the shrill and piercing call of the birds. The vivid white cockatoos are trashing the town.

Residents and business people are powerless to stop the daily invasion which starts around 7pm and lasts beyond midnight. The corellas are incredibly noisy, offensively messy and brutally destructive.

The little town is littered with white feathers, splashes of cocky droppings and twigs and pine cones which the birds strip from the town’s native and introduced trees. Aldinga looks a bit like the bottom of a giant cocky cage. The possibility of health dangers from faeces and feathers can’t be ignored.

Yet the 21st century has arrived in old Aldinga. A huge On The Run service station has just opened and there are plans for an Aldi and other shops in the town.

Will there be room for the rampant corellas? Apart from the mess, the birds use their powerful hooked beaks to chew through power cables, rip up rubber sporting surfaces and tear grass by the roots from the local oval and hockey field. They have cut power to businesses and plunged local sporting facilities, including netball and football, into darkness.

Corellas, seen here at the oval, have decended on Aldinga. Picture Roger Wyman

Corellas have been a seasonal issue in Aldinga for several years but locals agree the numbers — and the damage — are increasing.

Janet Freeman from the Aldinga fashion boutique, Gladys Sym Choon, lives in the town and has to wear earplugs to get to sleep.

“They roost in the trees around the town and their incessant noise goes on until well after midnight,” she said. “I can’t sit outside because of the noise and the mess. There are feathers everywhere and the cockies are killing off the trees. There was some thought of culling them but nobody seems to know why they come here and what to do about them.”

Kathy Hollingsworth from Aldinga Bay Seafood said: “They are wrecking the place. Everything is covered in feathers and droppings. There are dead trees. I have never seen this many birds.

“Someone is going to have to do something. They are too noisy, too messy and they are ruining Aldinga township.”

Rosey Hume from Rosey’s Restaurant said the corellas were harming her business. “People don’t want to sit outside. Apart from the noise, they get pooed on.

“It takes us half an hour every morning to scrub the outdoor eating areas because of the mess the cockies leave.”

The director of City Operations at Onkaparinga Council, Kirk Richardson said council decided in June 2012 to provide maintenance to areas affected by the corellas including streets, footpaths, parks and reserves.

“At present we are conducting cleaning programs in Aldinga, McLaren Vale and Old Noarlunga, either weekly or when required,” he said. “This involves a range of activities including road sweeping and blower vacuuming of debris.”

Council is no longer involved in bird behaviour programs but does implement limited control methods at some strategic assets such as Willunga Golf Course using sound and light to deter the birds and reduce their impact.

Because nobody has a solution to Aldinga’s plight, there is a danger a vigilante group will take the law into its own hands — perhaps with poison or shot guns. Recently three shots were fired in the town by an unidentified person.

And you can’t help thinking that if corellas descended in numbers on tranquil Burnside in Adelaide’s eastern suburbs someone would find a way to get rid of them.