There are several species of these incredible parrots, some are more prolific then others and the red tail black cockatoos that visit our back yard are the
forest red-tail cockatoo.
Nonetheless, they have come early this year and are eating green fruit before it has ripened to yellow.
They've been checking the trees regularly for some weeks.
These majestic birds are big, if you have seen a Macaw they are of a similar size, as such they eat
a lot.
Their feeding grounds have been seriously diminished in the last few years due to a variety of factors including repeated bush fires, even some being declared as 'Natural Disasters' and habitat destruction for human population expansion.
Black cockatoos are
starving. (that article was published in 2012 and that year our visitors were happy to wait for the fruit to be ripe in our backyard, so food is even harder to come by this year it seems)
The current conservations status of the these beautiful creatures is '
near threatened' and yet you have probably never heard of them. Other species with the same 'near threatened' status include the jaguar, monarch butterfly, narwhal and white rhino.
The females have a red and black banded tail as can be seen in the above picture.
The males have a bright red band on their tale without any black lines and even when their tale is not spread you can see how bright the red is on this male's. The photo below shows the male and female together.
They love to farm (IMHO) as they drop about as many seeds as they eat, and vigorously prune branches to promote new growth. Humans tend to think they are just making a mess.
They make quite the racket too with all their chitter chatter. It's such a joy to us when we hear them screeching away in the back yard.
Kaarakin Black Cockatoo Recovery Centre do an amazing job year after year of rescuing and rehabilitating cockatoo's. They are endlessly in need of funding because they are little known and of course the more funding they have the more they can do.
Kaarakin are currently running a
fundraiser (which appears to still be open although the goal date was for February) to keep the rescue programme running and are in need of help to meet their funding goal. Perhaps you could skip the next coffee and feed a cocky?
The proceeds from the last walking harnesses we purchased for
Freki and
Geri went to Kaarakin and I wish I could do more to help these fabulous birds so today I am sharing them with you.
These photos were taken this morning in my own back yard, I hope I get to take photos for many years to come.
Not exactly wordless (wordless Wednesday) but it does leave me speechless.
Have you heard of Black Cockatoos before?
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Beautiful bird. I hope they can survive us.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing at http://image-in-ing.blogspot.com/2015/03/flying-high.html
I hope so too.
DeleteShe is beautiful. Love the read. I had my finger bitten by a cockie when I was 17. Lesson - don't put your finger in a cage. It hurt.
ReplyDeleteJulie
Thank you for linking up with #wordlesswednesday
co-host - http://www.julieinthemaking.com/
They sure can bite hard!
DeleteThey are so majestic I hope they will not vanish.
ReplyDeleteIt is my hope too.
DeleteLovely bird, you have captured many very good shots.
ReplyDeleteHappy WW
Thanks Jay, it was a lucky morning.
DeleteGreat captures, these are beautiful :-)
ReplyDeleteThey are so pretty person.
DeleteSuch beautiful birds! No, I have never heard of them. I wish we could find better ways to co-exist with nature.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad I could introduce you to them!
Deletearen't they glorious birds? we are lucky in Oz to have such beauties! great shots.
ReplyDeleteOh Sherry, you went to spam for some strange reason. Fixed now. I think we are very privileged to have such amazing creatures. Lets hope we continue to.
DeleteSo sad!! They are a beautiful species!! Thanks for linking up with My 2 Favorite Things on Thursday - Party!! I love having you!! Pinned!
ReplyDeleteHopefully we can make enough noise to make a difference!
DeleteHow cool! I've never seen a black cockatoo before! I never see any cool birds at my home, except for hummingbirds in the summer. Thanks so much for sharing it with us at Totally Terrific Tuesday! It wouldn't be a party without you! :)
ReplyDeleteI'd love to see hummingbirds! We get honey-eaters and lots of little twitterers that all look pretty much the same - brown.
DeleteLovely photos. Luckily you seem to have food for them in your yard so you get to see them regularly and you get to help in a very special way, even if it is only a few birds at a time.
ReplyDeletevisiting from Hump Day Happenings
Yes, we're so happy we can do our small bit to help.
DeleteAmazing! You have very special visitors in your garden :) It's sad though that they are starving and I do hope that they get the help they need.
ReplyDeleteSo hope so too!
DeleteWhat a lovely bird! I hate hearing that animals are endangered especially when we humans have had a hand in it. Good that you have some food for them.
ReplyDeleteWe would put out seed for them too if we could but we can't get it high enough for them and the tree is actually not ours but leans into our garden from our neighbours so we can't climb it to string up a pulley system for a feed tray. We are planting for the future though.
DeleteSuch beautiful and intelligent animals! I loved reading your post as I had no idea about these wild parrots nor that they were endangered. It's awful when natural habitats for native animals are encroached and no major efforts are being made to address it.
ReplyDeleteI think part of the problem is that people don't know they are in trouble. They've always been there so people think they will always be there.
DeleteI had not heard of them before, how beautiful they are. Love hearing of people campaigning for their local wildlife. I hope the future is brighter for these characterful cockatoos.
ReplyDeleteYay, I've achieved what I set out to do, let a few more people know about these lovelies :) I hope their future is brighter too.
DeleteWhat fabulous birds (their beaks are amazing) and how sad that they are up against the likes of the narwal and black rhino in terms of their population levels and need for conservation. AS Happy Homebird said, I do hope their future can be saved.
ReplyDeleteThank you for adding a totally new species (to me) to #AnimalTales this week.
They have the strongest beak I've ever seen. As strong and sharp as a good pair of garden secateurs. At least the population levels are still good enough that something can still be done. Getting the word out there and making the cockatoos a species humans care about is the first step to making that happen!
Delete