Kew East woman Diana Taranto captures moment corellas take over her front yard

In a scene straight out of horror movie ‘The Birds,’ a huge flock of corellas have made themselves at home in the front yard of a Kew East home.

In a scene straight out of Alfred Hitchcock’s horror movie ‘The Birds’ a huge flock of hungry corellas have set up camp in the front yard of a Kew East home.

Diana Taranto shared photos and vision of the birds in her yard on Wednesday, with dozens of corellas coming together to eat seeds from the grass, with others gathering on the road outside her home and in a tree on a neighbour’s nature strip to gobble up seed cones.

Ms Taranto said it was like “living in an aviary”, while others compared it to a scene from ‘The Birds’, with many reporting hearing the birds’ “raucous cries” as they flew over the area.

And residents living in the leafy inner east and south east can expect to see more flocks of corellas making themselves at home in the area over the next few weeks, as the birds make the most of the “all-you-can-eat” buffet on offer with so many trees in the area.

But far from being scared, Ms Taranto said she didn’t have a problem with the corellas setting up camp on her lawn.

She said they had been there for three days and seemed to enjoy the grass even more after a gardener visited and gave them better access to the seeds.

“They don’t bother me at all, I think they are beautiful,” she said.

But she said the birds weren’t too keen to move out of the way of cars wanting to drive down the street.

She joked her husband was planning to put horror music over the vision of the birds descending onto the lawn.

Diana Taranto captured this photo of corellas on her front lawn in Kew East.

BirdLife Australia national public affairs manager Sean Dooley said this time of year seemed to be post-breeding season, where corellas formed massive flocks and descended on various suburbs, normally hanging around for a couple of weeks.

“Not a lot of people love them but some people adore them because they are highly intelligent and quite comical to watch,” he said.

Mr Dooley said there had been reports of big flocks of corellas in the eastern, inner east and south eastern suburbs over the last couple of years.

“They are taking advantage of the seeds in the grass and the bulbs (of a lot of weeds) and they also seem to like the south east and eastern suburbs because they are very well adapted to feeding on seed cones of introduced trees.”

He said in the past, corellas would have fed on gumnuts or wattle seeds but they had now adapted to take things like seeds cones from liquidambar or plane trees.

“In that inner east and inner south east there is this huge resource for them now and those beautiful leafy suburbs, we’ve destroyed so much habitat for native birds, but bizarrely we’ve created an all-you-can-eat buffet for the corellas.

“They are pretty rowdy but they do move around quite a bit.

“They might stick to one area for a couple of weeks but normally they will eventually move on.

“Often when people see huge flocks of corellas they are horrified they are doing damage

but it’s not always the case.

“Sometimes they’ll rip through grass and certainly golf courses aren’t fans.

“But one of their favourite foods are the bulbs of a lot of weeds, so they’re not always doing damage sometimes they’re doing a bit of benefit.”