Man Finally Catches Mysterious Litterbug Who’s Been Dumping His Trash Every Week

For weeks now, Reddit user Rroytje has been plagued by an ongoing mystery. Just about every time he’d haul his garbage bin to the curb outside his home in Melbourne, Australia, he’d later find its contents strewn across his driveway.

“Usually, I wake up in the morning with mess everywhere,” Rroytje wrote.

With the rummaging taking place mostly under the cover of darkness, the perpetrator had remained unknown to Rroytje. That is, until recently.

The other day, he struck early — and the homeowner caught him in the act:

Turns out, the mysterious litterbug targeting the bin was actually a majestic sulphur-crested cockatoo, native to the region.

“I never thought it was the bird that created the mess every week,” Rroytje wrote, noting: “You can tell he had done this before, like, many times.”

But Rroytje’s garbage bin is far from the only one to fall victim to such a feathery trash bandit.

Throughout neighborhoods across Australia, cockatoos have been known to hoist open trash can lids in search of leftover snacks. But it’s not just an impressive show of cleverness and dexterity — the behavior is a remarkable example of “social learning,” one with few precedents in the animal kingdom.

In 2018, researchers found that cockatoos weren’t just figuring it out individually — they were teaching one another, spreading the technique across neighborhoods like an underground movement.

This video from the scientific journal “The Conversation” outlines the researchers’ findings:

For Rroytje, who just discovered this fascinating cockatoo behavior firsthand, it’s just another wonder of Australia’s diverse wildlife — even if it’s occasionally inconvenient.

“We got so many different bird species, it’s amazing … I was actually so happy that I finally found out what happens with the rubbish every week,” Rroytje said, adding: “I’m so glad this made people laugh. In the meantime, I am cleaning my driveway.”