Plump, juicy watermelons have proved too much temptation for some hungry cockatoos near Chinchilla, Queensland.The giant watermelons Terry O'Leary was planning on entering in the Chinchilla's Big Melon competition have been attacked by birds."I had a couple there that were looking pretty decent, but with the big melon, the cockatoos just came in and pretty well shredded it, they just pull the rind and the flesh off to get to the seed."Crows are also a problem year in year out, because the watermelons are grown close to the Charlie's Creek catchment, where there is habitat for the crows to live in."It is pretty well a fast food joint, they can just come and land in the paddock and have a feed of delicious melon and fly back," said Mr O'Leary. "The cockatoos aren't as bad for the seedless watermelons because unlike the crows they're not after the flesh they're just after the seed, and our cockatoo population has actually learnt to only go for the seeded watermelon not the seedless."It caps off a tough year for the Chinchilla watermelon grower with strong supply reducing prices for watermelons."We're into our ninth week of prices that are below, or just coming up to the cost of production now," he said. "Mainly because we've had such good weather especially on the coast and a late wet season coming into the north so there's still fruit coming out of north Queensland and they've normally well and truly stopped by now.The quality that was coming out of here early on was quite exceptional, it's just a shame that we were giving them away."

Source - http://www.freshplaza.com