<hw>Cockatoo</hw>, <i>v. intr</i>. (1) To be a farmer.
1890. Rolf Boldrewood, `Squatter's Dream,' c. xx. p. 245:
"Fancy three hundred acres in Oxfordshire, with a score or two of bullocks,and twice as many black-faced Down sheep. Regular cockatooing."
(2) A special sense—to sit on a fence as the bird sits.
1890. Rolf Boldrewood, `A Colonial Reformer,' c. xviii. p. 224:
"The correct thing, on first arriving at a drafting-yard, is to `cockatoo,' or sit on the rails high above the tossing horn-billows."
<hw>Cockatooer</hw>, <i>n</i>. a variant of <i>Cockatoo</i> (q.v.), quite fallen into disuse, if quotation be not a nonce use.
1852. Mrs. Meredith, `My Home in Tasmania,' vol. ii. p. 137:
"A few wretched-looking huts and hovels, the dwellings of `cockatooers,' who are not, as it might seem, a species of bird, but human beings; who rent portions of this forest . . . on exorbitant terms . . . and vainly endeavour to exist on what they can earn besides, their frequent compulsory abstinence from meat, when they cannot afford to buy it, even in their land of cheap and abundant food, giving them some affinity to the grain-eating white cockatoos."
<hw>Cockatoo Fence</hw>, <i>n</i>. fence erected by small farmers.