Tag Archives: yellow tailed black cockie

The Black Cockies are back

Animals, , , ,

They’re back, and they still have an appetite for destruction! Every year about this time the black cockies visit for a day or two, tear up the Banksia trees in our yard then leave.

Black Cockie tearing up a Banksia
Black Cockie tearing up a Banksia

Sulphur Crested Cockies are here in abundance year round, Black Cockies only visit for a few days per year, sometimes I miss them altogether. Yellow tailed black cockatoos are larger than their sulphur crested cousins, they have a louder and more piercing shriek too. A few days before I saw the black cockies this year I heard a chilling shriek in the valley after dark, for a moment I thought it sounded like a person in distress, but I figured it was more animal like. After I saw the Cockies I now think that’s what it was.

Black Cockie in the Banksia tree
Black Cockie in the Banksia tree

This year the black cockies visited on July 23rd, a few weeks earlier than previous years.

Black Cockies

Animals, , , , ,

Calyptorhynchus funereus

I used to think that a black cockie was a black cockie, it turns out that the name is a general descriptive term for several species of cockatoos with black colouring.

The cockies that visit my yard are Yellow tailed black cockatoos. For the last few years they’ve been turning up for just 1 day, chowing down on Banksia flowers, gnawing off many small branches, and then flying out not to be seen for another year.

Yellow tailed black cockatoos are big, noticeably bigger than the Sulphur-crested Cockatoos that are here year round. They have black feathers all over with a yellow patch on the cheek and the tail.

A Yellow tailed black cockie on the clothes line. They visit once a year to attack the Banksia trees, this year it was August 5th

 

Black cockie eating a Banksia flower

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