Cockatoo bad hair day!

This morning I spotted a large sulphur-crested cockatoo landing in the tree housing our bird feeder. First of all he pruned the area around the feeder, biting of small twigs and clumps of leaves to give him a clearer access to the seeds in the feeder. Then he got stuck into feeding while keeping an eye on the camera.

When he heard the camera clicking away, up went his crest, giving the appearance of a very bad hair day! He looks great in closeup in LARGE.

The Sulphur-crested Cockatoo (Cacatua galerita) is Australia's best known parrot. These large birds are often kept as pets, as they are extremely intelligent and are very good at learning to talk. However they can be very loud, tend to be noisy much of the time and often live for more than 70 years! Personally I am not a fan of locking up birds in cages, especially not large native birds such as this one.

This white cockatoo is found in wooded habitats in much of Australia and New Guinea. They are often very numerous, leading to them sometimes being considered pests by the wheat farmers whose grain crops they like to feast on!

Mid-morning, such as today, the cockatoos usually feed on seeds on the ground, (or from our bird feeder), and then during the hottest part of the day they sit in trees near the feeding area, stripping the leaves and bark.

In the afternoon they feed again and then fly back to their roosting trees for the night. Each day they prefer to return to feed in the same area until the food supply is exhausted. Then move on.

Their diet consists of the seeds of grasses and herbaceous plants, grains, bulbous roots, berries, nuts and leaf buds. Plus any free handout they can find!

PS. Yesterday where I posted a link to my Adelaide Central Market blog of photos, the link at first did not work properly. It has now been fixed.
If you want to take a look back at more pix from the market, please CLICK HERE.