Carnaby’s black cockatoo

Carnaby’s black cockatoo is endemic to southwest Australia. It is listed as an endangered species by the Federal and Western Australian governments. Like most parrots, it is protected by CITES, an international agreement that makes trade, export, and import of listed wild-caught species illegal.

About Carnaby’s black cockatoo in brief

Carnaby’s black cockatoo is endemic to southwest Australia. Measuring 53–58cm in length, it has a short crest on the top of its head. Its plumage is mostly greyish black, and it has prominent white cheek patches and a white tail band. It nests in hollows situated high in trees with fairly large diameters, generally Eucalyptus. It is listed as an endangered species by the Federal and Western Australian governments. Like most parrots, it is protected by CITES, an international agreement that makes trade, export, and import of listed wild-caught species illegal. The three species of the genus Zanda have been variously considered as two, then as a single species for many years. The red-tailed and glossy black cockatoos form the nominate genus of Calyptorhynchus. The two groups are distinguished by differing juvenile food begging calls and the degree of sexual dimorphism. Males and females of the latter group have markedly different appearance, whereas those of the former have similar plumage. In the 1970s, Australian ornithologist Denis Saunders analysed the two white-tailed taxa and found that Baudin’s blackcockatoo also has a longer wing, and wider and higher skull than Carnaby’sblack cockatoos. In a 1979 paper, Saunders highlighted the short-billed and the southern race xanthan of yellow-tailed black cockats as a distinct species. He proposed that Western Australia had been colonised on two separate occasions by a common ancestor of all three forms and later by what has become theShort-bill black Cockatoo.

An analysis of protein allozymes published in 1984 revealed the two Western Australian forms to be more closely related to each other than the yellow-tails. The consensus since then has been to treat them as three species, yet they were called short-Billed and long-bills in scientific works yet called Carnaby’s and Baudins’ cockatos in the scientific works. The two species were once known collectively as the white-tails black cock atoo until formally classified as separate species. The typical form had a long narrow bill it used to extract eucalyptic seeds from marri’s seed pods. It generally takes 28 to 29 days for the female to incubate the eggs, and the young fledge ten to eleven weeks after hatching. The young will stay with the family until the next breeding season, and sometimes even longer. The family leaves the nesting site after the young fleege until the following year. It flies with deep and slow wingbeats, generally high above trees. Seeds of plants of the families Proteaceae and, to a lesser extent, Myrtaceae form a large part of its diet. The birds lived in mallee and sandplains, using their large bills to crack open woody seed pods and use their long bills to extract them.

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