An animal has descended upon the town of Bridgewater on Loddon in what locals describe as “plague proportions,” devastating crops, killing red gums which line the river and wreaking all manner of havoc on wires, shade clothes and back yards.

Farmers around the townships of Bridgewater and Inglewood at the southern entrance of the Loddon Shire say years of drought-like conditions have driven foxes out of the mountains and amongst their sheep.

Rabbits are a destructive pest along the reaches of the Loddon River – as they have been in almost all agricultural land in Australia for generations.

But the animal which local farmers say has had the most devastating impact in recent years is not an invasive species at all.

It’s a native parrot.

The Water Wheel Vineyards in the heart of the town is a local institution, nestled among the silos of one of its major employers, the flour mill.

Normally it produces between 350 to 400 tonnes of grape per year.

But Winemaker Bill Trevaskis said flocks of long-billed corellas had destroyed more than 30 acres of grapes in the vineyard, worth more than $50,000 this season.

The destruction, he said, was wanton.

“They'll nip the bunches off – they don't actually eat the fruit,” Mr Trevaskis said.

“If they were eating the fruit, you'd say, ‘well everything's got to survive’.

“But they're just destructive, they just nip the bunches off and the fruit rots on the ground.”

And the birds are not just affecting the vineyards in which they are sinking their beaks.

After watching the earlier-ripening shiraz and cabernet sauvignon varieties getting torn to shreds, the winemaker was forced to pick the later-ripening petit verdot variety before the birds could get to it.

“Because we pick the shiraz and cabernet first and we just have a small area of petit verdot it means it stands out, so they just concentrate on that,” he said.

“We had to pick it before it was ripe because ,if we didn't pick it, we're weren't going to get anything.

“If you're picking your fruit green, obviously you're not going to end up with the quality of wine you'd like to.”

Bridgewater on Loddon Development committee president Graham Morse said the corella population had hit unprecedented levels.

“It started off being a problem about three years ago,” the retired farmer said.

“This year, they’ve hit a peak.

“Now they’re in plague proportions and the town is being devastated.”

Mr Morse said the population boomed when a stock feed company came to town, storing grain in large open bunkers.

The bunkers were covered in tarpaulins – which proved no match for the birds’ beaks. 

“It was like a feed lot for corellas,” he said.

“They had the Loddon River as a constant water supply and lots of hollows in the trees.

“Feed, water, places to make home … it created the perfect breeding ground for them.”

Mr Morse said the mill now stored its grain in silos and had joined numerous efforts to try and disperse the birds – from firing off shotguns to fake hawks.

But nothing worked.

“When they were here in the first place, we didn’t have the same kind of numbers and that was okay,” he said.

“But when they get into plague proportions, like anything, that's when you've got your big problem.

“They become hungry, then they start eating things they normally wouldn't.

“They’re literally eating the tops off power lines.

“We’re at wits end,” he said.

The BOLD president said the destruction was impacting more than agriculture in the town.

That committee is pushing a plan to beautify Bridgewater – they want more trees, more grass and better foothpaths to capture passing traffic.

“We’re the gateway to the Loddon Shire,” Mr Morse said.

“If you’re driving up from Melbourne or from Bendigo you pass through Bridgewater … but if a town looks a bit run down you think, ‘I’ll stop in at the next place.’”

But BOLD worries the troublesome parrots might make it harder to secure the kind of money which would be required for the town’s facelift.

“We had a shade sail over the reserve for children – they ruined that and that was the shire’s money,” Mr Morse said.

“The shire is planning to do a $400,000 development along the side of the Loddon River and we're concerned they’ll wreck anything that is created.

“They’ve already killed some of the old trees … and they’ll dig up anything.”

While human activity had unwittingly created “a paradise” for the parrots, drought-like conditions have pushed many wild animals – both native and invasive – into conflict with local farmers. 

Inglewood farmer John Lamprell said this would have been a bumper year for his merino flock – despite the fact he was carting water to his 500-acre mixed farm.

Then the foxes came.

“We would’ve had 300 lambs,” he said.

“We lost 50.”

Each lamb could have been sold for between $100 to $150.

Mr Lamprell said the foxes were being driven out of the woods by hunger.

“They’re starving,” he said.

“They’re mangy, you can see they aren’t healthy.”

Mr Morse said the number of foxes had risen over the decades as the number of people on the land had declined.

“When I was younger everyone my age would go out within their area and shoot foxes to keep their numbers down,” he said. “There aren’t many young people on farms anymore … and you hardly see a spotlight.”

But Mr Morse said the challenge of controlling the nocturnal, infamously elusive predator did not apply to the gregarious parrots.

“We need to cull those corellas,” he said.