Carnaby’s black cockatoos exhibit unusual behaviour

Louise - a keen amateur environmentalist from York, WA - sent us a letter in early October concerning the raucous Carnaby’s black cockatoos that were making themselves heard in the wheatbelt town. Aside from making a lot of noise, the Carnaby’s also exhibited some unusual behaviour that she had never seen before.

As a bit of background for our readers, Carnaby’s cockatoos are most often found in the wheatbelt around October. They migrate to the area after the winter rains start, usually about June-July, and return to the coast once their chicks are ready to fly around Christmas.

Once the chicks are grown, young and old birds gather in and around Perth in large flocks. This massive congregation of birds explains why many people don’t realise that the Carnaby’s cockatoo is in fact an endangered species.

But what constitutes a large flock today of maybe 50-100 birds is nothing compared to the flocks of several thousand that might have been seen 50 years ago. These birds were once said to “blacken the sky” as they flew overhead.

Letter from Louise…

The flock of Carnaby’s that is currently living in and around the York townsite have been feeding and beak grinding, and flying up and down the creek  in the flooded gums today, in the early afternoon. We are only 35km from the centre of town. It has to be the same flock. I saw at least ten in the creekline, though I did see close to thirty of them in town yesterday.

They are feeding up high in the canopy. Goodness knows what they are eating. This species has very insignificant little gumnuts.  We have never observed this behaviour before, though they often fly overhead, as reported a few months ago. We are having very late rains this year. A lot of things are different.

Usually there are thousands of introduced corellas in and around York, occupying most of the hollows in the old eucalypts, shredding trees and gardens in town, digging up farmers’ newly planted crops, tearing holes in the industrial tarps that cover the grain storage bins for our export grain, and defaecating on / contaminating the grain. There was legal, humane mass culling of corellas during the autumn.

When there are a lot of corellas the ducks, possums, pink and grey galahs and yellow Twenty Eight parrots disappear. This year the Carnaby’s must be getting their fair share of the nesting hollows. The other species are certainly returning and breeding, and we have had other uncommon species such as kingfishers, rails and wrens return as well.

By the way, the other bit of good news is that there is at least one baby Carnaby amongst the mature birds. It is an exciting sound to hear but I am glad my babies didn’t make that sort of racket when they were little!

Cheers

Louise