From down under, we have some photos of the wonderful local cockatoos from reader Duncan McCaskill. His captions are indented:
I’ve had Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus funereus) visit my garden in suburban Canberra fairly often lately, so I thought I’d offer some photos of them.
When they’ve been in my garden they mostly just roost for a while and idly pick at the trees. This one below is a male, the one above is a female. Males have a pink eye ring and a dark bill. Females have a dark grey eye ring and a pale bill.
If they detect wood-boring grubs they will rip into the tree with their powerful bills to get at them. (Fortunately this isn’t my tree – they can do a lot of damage.)
The main attraction for them around my place are the pine trees down the street. Pines are not native to Australia, but they are widely planted, both in gardens and in plantations for timber – mostly Pinus radiata (Monterey Pine). Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoos have taken to pines as a food source. They tear into pine cones to eat the seeds, like this:
Black-Cockatoos are big birds – about 60cm or so in length and about 600-900g in weight. [JAC: This bird looks delighted with his cone!]
It is common to see large flocks of Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoos around pine plantations in south east Australia, but the pines provide only food. To breed, they need deep hollows in old eucalypts, like this one I came across in the Blue Mountains.
And a couple extras… These are Red-tailed Black-Cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus banksii) that I saw in Townsville (North Queensland) back in April. The female has yellow spots on the head and wings and barred orange tail panels.
The male is blacker and has scarlet tail panels.
The first picture is incredible. It’s so beautiful. The pine cone pictures made me smile. Thank you for sharing these.
Lovely pictures of fascinating birds. Thanks!
Thanks, Duncan. I think I could watch these birds all day.
Very interesting! I did not know of these birds. It looks like the one is tearing into dead wood for grubs, so maybe not that bad.
What wonderful species you have down under. A visit is on my bucket list.
When I lived in the Yarra Valley outside Melbourne I used to watch these fellows flying through the valley and squarking majestically with their incredibly loud voice. Freedom embodied!
Their feathers are jet black and gold-tipped.
Thanks for the great pictures. We’ve visited Australia several times but haven’t seen these lovely birds.
Great pictures, thanks.
Those red-tailed black cockatoos are sexually dimorphic in bill morphology. the Wikipedia article doesn’t seem to say anything about this – does the photographer have anything to pass on? Generally when you get this sort of dimorphism, there’s dietary partitioning.
I haven’t noticed any difference in bill morphology, and I can’t see any difference in any of my photos. None of my bird books mention any difference. Both sexes appeared to be eating the same fruits (I don’t know much about plants and don’t know what they were eating).
Thanks for introducing them to me. They are gorgeous!
-Ryan
Those are beautiful birds. This email was lost in my inbox…very late, but wished to complement.