Chapters → The co-experience of housing struggles of birds and humans in Sydney Sophia Maalsen

The co-experience of housing struggles of birds and humans in Sydney Sophia Maalsen

My daily walk to the Kings Cross train station, takes me past old Victorian terraces variously turned into back packer hostels, cafes, hotels and private residences. The street is lined with plane trees, which are home to various birds and offer necessary shade during summer. As I am passing houses and lodgings for humans, my walk down Victoria Street also takes me past the dwellings birds and other wildlife which shelter in the trees. One of the most well known residents of these trees are the sulphur crested cockatoos, which according to the strata laws in my building, I am not allowed to feed. The birds are known for chewing the seals around windows on buildings and cars. They also have a penchant for antennas on cars.

The plane trees themselves are contested. They are not native to Australia and cause allergies in some people. Yet they also offer pratical and aesthetic contributions to the street. In summer they provide shade and in autumn they serve a canopy of red and orange as their leaves turn and fall, carpeting the footpaths in crunchy leaves – something which, coming from Queensland, continues to fascinate me. Aside from their canopy, their hollows are home to nesting birds and many a cockatoo has raised its chicks in the hollows.

One particular morning in December 2019 I was confronted with the sight of a stump where a tree had been just hours before. The felled tree was hollow to its base and was taped off. On its own this sight would make me sad but strutting around the small bit of trunk that was left and looking perplexed and distraught were a pair of cockatoos who the previous day had been happily raising their chicks in the tree.

A group of concerned locals gathered and I was told that the council deployed tree surgeons had felled the tree but failed to stop when they realised that the birds were nesting. According to some accounts the chicks had moved right to the base of the hollow and that was why the aborists had continued to fell the tree – they hadn’t seen them. Others claimed the aborists knew the chicks were there but continued regardless. Either way the result was the same. The tree was gone, the chicks were nowhere to be seen and the parent cockatoos were left wondering what had happened to their home and family. They kept circling back to the stump that remained, alternately appearing confused, stressed and territorial. I was bereft. Seeing nature displaced was confusing and distressing.

I stood there, temporarily discombobulated, along with five other concerned residents. One local resident suggested I join the Potts Pointers Facebook group which was keeping updates on the situation. The chicks had been rescued and taken to the local vet, but they were still separated from their parents. I posted a photo of the stump and the parent ‘toos, to Twitter to many a sympathetic response. I have previously posted about various cheeky local cockatoo and wildlife anecdotes to my account. I continued with my day, distressed for the cockatoo family.

The next day, I walked my usual route to the station. With the birds’ home, branches and leaves missing, I could look up to the neighbouring tree. I was surprised and relieved by what I saw. Overnight a bird house had appeared and in it, the two chicks and Mum and Dad protectively guarding their new home. I stopped and checked the Potts Pointers Facebook group, immediately. While the cockatoo chicks had been in care, other members of the community had built and installed the bird house. The chicks were rehoused and reunited with their parent cockatoos. I updated my Twitter with the good news story and the post was met with a joy I rarely see on Twitter.

This vignette may be about cockatoos but it tells us more than that. It is a story of urban contestations, a story of human-nature relations, of community and it also, in a weird perhaps anthropomorphic way is a story about housing.

Sydney is a tough place to live. I reflected on the links between the housing experiences of the birds and the humans of Sydney. Birds it seemed, were not exempt from the hostility of the Sydney housing market. This family had essentially been evicted, their home demolished, and their family disrupted before community activism led to them being rehomed.

Home ownership as been normalised as the dominant housing ideology in Australia, post World War 2 however, it is increasingly out of reach for younger generations. [16] Additionally, NSW and Australia more broadly, have comparably restrictive rental laws compared to countries where long-term renting is more accepted. In countries where the home ownership ideology is pervasive, home ownership is entangled with morality and tenants are considered as morally flawed. This perception is reflected in tenancy laws. Security of tenure is important for tenants to feel at home, but this is hard when leases are 6 to 12 months, and in NSW, despite significant campaigning from advocacy groups to end no grounds evictions, the possibility of being evicted without cause.

One of the main characteristics of home is the ability to have agency over one’s space, but this is challenging when what you can and can’t do within your home is constrained by tenancy laws – for example, being unable to hang a picture, or in the case of the cockatoo, not being given the choice to raise your children in your chosen home – all quite reasonable activities.

It is also a story of contested nature-human relations. The trees are not native to Australia although our local fauna has been quick to take advantage of the shade, respite and home they provide. The tree in question was clearly designated as a risk to pedestrians or property, with its hollowed out trunk and limbs posing a threat should they fall. In the scheme of the tree removal, the removal of the tree and the threat it posed was a greater priority than saving the cockatoos. To the community, the removal of the tree while the cockatoos were nesting heightened the conflict. But the inicident also reveals the generative nature of more-than-human encounters. The cockatoos were the central point around which the community converged, organised and acted. It speaks to the value in living with more-than-human neighbours. And it highlights the care that can be enacted to those living with us despite difference. [17]

16 Maalsen, S. (2019). I cannot afford to live alone in this city and I enjoy the company of others: why people are share housing in Syd- ney. Australian Geographer, 50(3), 315-332.
17 McKiernan S, Instone L. (2016) From pest to partner: rethinking the Australian White Ibis in the more-than-human city. Cultural Geographies, 23(3):475-494.

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It all started when…

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