Cocky Chaos: Day 14 of Sunburnt Santa

How to play Cocky Chaos

• Drag back, aim, let go. Gum nuts never run out.
• Cockies land on the roof for 60 seconds. One that sits for 6 seconds pulls a bulb off the lights: 75 points each.
• Hit in a row for a combo. Galahs and the rare black cockatoo are worth more. Skittish cockies bolt fast; fly-pasts never land but are worth the most.

Scoring

A skittish bird is worth 1.5x and a fly-past 2x; a bird hit while it is flying scores another 1.5x, and a second bird with the same gum nut 1.5x more. Hits in a row multiply it all: x2 from 3 in a row, up to x5 from 12. A gum nut that hits nothing, or a bird that leaves untouched, resets the combo.

Stars: the three targets

Stars don't lock anything; they show how you're going, and doors with at least one star count towards the bonus games.

Tips for three stars

1. Only the white sulphur-crested cockies chew the lights. They are the cheapest birds, but a sitter that stays six seconds costs 75 and then another 75 every four seconds after that. Knock them off early, before chasing the flashy ones.
2. The combo is worth more than any single bird. A gum nut that hits nothing resets it, and so does any bird you let fly away, so aim for clean shots rather than spraying, and don't let a skittish cocky bolt untouched.
3. Save your sharpest shooting for fly-pasts and the last 10 seconds, when black cockatoos turn up twice as often. A black cockatoo fly-past is 500 x 2 for the fly-past x 1.5 for mid-air: at x5 that one gum nut is worth 7,500.

The real story: why cockatoos chew everything, Christmas lights included

The sulphur-crested cockatoo is a large white parrot, 45 to 50 centimetres long, found through northern and eastern mainland Australia and Tasmania, with a small population around Perth [1]. It is famously loud, feeds in groups with one or more birds keeping watch from a nearby perch, and has been known to live to about eighty in captivity [1]. Even when it isn't eating, it bites off twigs and leaves it never swallows, which may help keep its bill trimmed, and in towns it uses that bill on timber decking and house panelling [1].

A cocky's beak keeps growing, a bit like a fingernail, and has to be worn down by gnawing [2]. In Canberra, the ACT Government reported 243 street light repairs from April 2018 linked to suspected or confirmed bird damage, many of them by cockatoos and corellas chewing wiring [2]. A local naturalist put part of it down to boredom: the birds fill their crops faster than they can digest, so they have time on their hands, and stripping rubber off a light is not far from stripping bark off a tree [2].

So when your fairy lights go dark in December and there's a white bird on the gutter looking pleased with itself, you know who to blame. In the game the gum nuts only startle them: every bird gets a bonk, a daze and flies off. More in why cockatoos go for Christmas lights.

Read more: Why do cockatoos rip off Christmas lights?.

When it opens

Door 14 opens on day 14 of your own calendar (your Day 1 is the day you first play), and for everyone by 14 December. Play the door before it to open it. Once it's open you can replay it as often as you like, and after Christmas Eve all 24 doors stay open. How the calendar works.

Play now

Same kind of game: Bin Chicken Blitz, Seagull Showdown, Snag Toss.

Sources for the real story

1. Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Australian Museum
2. Cockatoos are vandalistic punks, but just how much damage do they do?, Region Canberra