At first, I thought it was the boom-box of my neighbour’s teen grandsons, who like to smother the annoying symphony of birdcalls and frogs with the insistent urban grind of rap and pretend they’re in the ‘hood’ while they rake up leaves.
But no — we were kilometres away, and this thudding was shaking the trees around me.
Even Desmond, the dancing flyweight, stopped mid-pirouette and looked around.
I looked up, and there, at the top of a hollow gum tree, was a sulphur crested cockatoo headbanging its beak on the smooth grey bark like a mohawked fan front row at a Sex Pistols gig.
I watched fascinated as it pounded out a solid 4/4 rhythm at 120 beats per minute.
If I had a guitar, we could have punched out a fair rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird.
It made me think — was the cocky trying to find something to eat or was it whacking its head on a tree because even the bird world has gone bananas with tariffs on gum honey and forced deportations of their hard-working friends, the noisy Indian mynas?
Or was it just having fun?
This led to another question — do animals have fun, or is it just a daily grind of survival?
I went deeper. Do animals have free will or is everything they do determined by genes?
We could ask the same questions about ourselves.
The world is a jigsaw of questions.
Especially on a bushwalk as the first yellow wattle appears under a cerulean sky.
This tree-banging cocky reminded me of his YouTube mate who recently enjoyed 15 minutes of fame with the down-shake, the foot-lift swing, the headbang, and the body roll, all performed to a catchy disco beat.
Perhaps, as some scientists say, this was all a show for a potential sexy-looking cocky across the room, but I didn’t see one.
Now, scientists at Charles Sturt University have recorded 30 distinct dance moves that captive cockies perform. The scientists suggest that cockies dance because they enjoy it, not just for mating rituals.
I’ve done my own experiments on free will versus determinism with Dezzy the dancer. My favourite is the self-generated face slap, which involves violently shaking his head while holding the rubber inner sole of a shoe in his mouth.
The force of the headshake bends the inner sole into a sort of elastic helicopter blade which audibly slaps him in the face.
I can see no biological purpose in this self-flagellation other than enjoying a half-hour of damn silly fun.
Likewise, people hitting, throwing and kicking balls around. Bad backs, bung elbows, and torn knees are the price of these activities, but people do them anyway.
Today, sport has become ingrained into the human psyche and constrained by rules and conventions.
But the first person to pick up a stuffed sheep stomach and run off with it while looking back with a wild grin was a dancing cocky moment for the human race.
Equally, the first person to spray-paint their hand on a cave wall was the first to indulge in a pointless piece of human cocky dancing.
All this creative playtime demands time out from the daily grind of survival, which is probably why not many of us today are able to let go and get really silly.
We need to throw off our jeans and get dancing.
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