I often search for Glossy Black Cockatoos. They’re found in pairs, almost always in a particular kind of tree – casuarinas, or “she-oaks.” Although they are flowering plants, casuarinas look like pines, with needle-like leaves and small, cone-like pods that are demolished by glossy black cockatoos. Apparently they eat nothing else.
Above is a pair, with the female – more spectacular – on the left and male on right. Females have those yellow crown-like head feathers and, hidden below, stunning orange bands. Males have a plain head and more uniform, but still beautiful, bands of red under their tails. You can see a glimpse of the red bands on the male above; the female’s are hidden. Both are demolishing a casuarina pod.
The female leaps up –
I’d not disturbed her; I was well back, and on the other side of a small gully.
I watched them for a long time.
I admit that they may have kept an eye on me, too.
Then, moving about trying to get better angles, I saw that there was a third.
I think this was a male-female pair plus a juvenile. I am not completely sure, as there aren’t a lot of juvenile GBC photos online, and in the ones I’ve found, the juvenile has some speckling over the feathers of the front of the body. Perhaps those few online photos are of one sex. I’ve never seen a juvenile before.
I read that these cockatoos, which mate for life, lay just one egg each year.
They clambered over the casuarina tree, eating a lot of the time. They didn’t interact significantly during the time I was watching them. Neither adult fed the third one – I’ve often watched parrots of other species feed juveniles over the last few months, and this one, at least today, seemed completely self-sufficient.
Here’s the male again.
Then, after a while, the juvenile climbed to an area back near the trunk of the tree, far from most of the foliage, and just sat and looked out. He looked like he was taking it all in, getting used to the idea of being a Glossy Black Cockatoo, entering into that life and way of being – it was hard not to soliloquize in exactly that manner.
He sat quietly looking out, while the other two went on with their endless seed-pod chomping.
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Notes
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