S8 Ep766: Zakis reports that Dallas, his elderly dog, has formed a surprising alliance with local minor birds, allowing them to share his backyard and seeds — diplomatically separating them from their "villainous" cockatoo associates who typically vandalize the nei
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 19 April 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
Zakis reports that Dallas, his elderly dog, has formed a surprising alliance with local minor birds, allowing them to share his backyard and seeds — diplomatically separating them from their "villainous" cockatoo associates who typically vandalize the neighborhood. As winter approaches the cockatoos retreat to bushlands, while Dallas remains brave on dark morning walks, tolerant of wombats though defensive around horses, and celebrated for displaying a level of civilized diplomacy. (4)
1905 SYDNEY
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| 0:29.8 | I'm John Batchel with my good friend Jeremy Zakis in New South Wales and his 11 and a half year |
| 0:36.2 | old Spoodle looking for friends in the morning. He's adopted |
| 0:41.7 | several magpie families, though they are unusually aggressive routinely, not with Dallas. He shares |
| 0:48.8 | his breakfast with them. And then he adopted more friendly birds in the neighborhood. |
| 1:02.7 | But a looming cloud of cockatoos and their surrogate Hezbollah organization, the minor birds. |
| 1:07.2 | It looks like Dallas has picked off the minor birds and made peace with them. |
| 1:12.1 | Is that your conclusion that he's allowing the minor birds to get closer and closer, |
| 1:17.9 | Jeremy? Oh, absolutely, John. In fact, only a few hours ago, I saw it again with my own eyes. |
| 1:23.2 | Dallas is now allowing the minor birds to not only land in the backyard, but he will stay out there with them while they just jump around eating the seeds. And it's very, it's interesting too, because at the other end of the yard this morning as well, |
| 1:30.5 | we also had the mac pies. |
| 1:32.6 | So the mac pies and Dallas are now allowing the minor birds to land in the backyard. |
| 1:37.7 | The only difference is, though, compared to now and a few weeks ago, |
| 1:41.0 | is there probably is only about one fifth of the minor birds that we had back then |
| 1:44.7 | when we had them really on mass and they were just noisy and boisterous and Dallas had pretty much |
| 1:49.3 | had enough of them and chased them off at every opportunity. But now they are happily eating in our |
| 1:55.1 | backyard pretty much picking off the scene. I haven't seen them yet actually go and share any of Dallas's |
| 2:00.2 | breakfast like the magpies. They haven't certainly come up. go and share any of Dallas's breakfast, like the |
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