Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE CUCKOO-LIKE BIRDS

THE PARROTS

Great Black Cockatoo

We may appropriately begin the consideration of the group with the Great Black or Palm Cockatoo (Microglossus aterrimus) of North Australia and Papuan Islands, which is distinguished at once from all the other members of the subfamily by having the cheeks entirely naked.

The most striking characteristic of this species is the enormously large and powerful bill with almost needle-like point. It is also the largest of the group, attaining a length of twenty-eight to thirty-two inches, of which about ten inches is made up by the tail. The crest, composed of narrow feathers, is very long, and the plumage is slaty black, powdered with gray, becoming deep velvety black on the head and lores, while the naked cheeks are pale red bordered by pale yellow. The female is similar but smaller than the male, and the young birds exhibit a series of narrow yellowish bands on the abdomen, under wing-coverts, and lower tail-coverts. The tongue is a surprisingly slender and worm-like organ.

This species is not so gregarious as many of the others, being observed singly or in twos or threes, and frequenting the dense forests, where it keeps mostly to the tops of the loftiest trees. Its flight is described as slow and noiseless and not extended for any great distance. Mr. Macgillivray ventured the opinion that the powerful beak was employed in stripping away the leaves near the summits of palm trees to enable it to arrive at the tender central shoot, but Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace found them feeding almost exclusively on the kernel of the kanari-nut, the fruit of a lofty forest tree (Canarium commune) growing in the Moluccas and elsewhere. This nut, which is triangular in shape and very smooth, has such an exceedingly hard shell that it requires a heavy hammer to crack it, yet the bird succeeds in opening it very dexterously.”

Taking one endwise in its bill, and keeping it firm by a pressure of the tongue, it cuts a transverse notch by a lateral sawing motion of the sharp-edged lower mandible. This done it takes hold of the nut with its foot, and, biting off a piece of leaf, retains it in the deep notch of the upper mandible, and, again, seizing the nut, which is prevented from slipping by the elastic tissue of the leaf, fixes the edge of the lower mandible in the notch, and by a powerful nip breaks off a piece of the shell. Again taking the nut in its claws, it inserts the long and very slender point of the bill, and picks out the kernel, which is seized hold of, morsel by morsel, by the extensile tongue."

 

 

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