This is a sulphur-crested cockatoo, so named for the yellow crown of feathers on its head. For those of us here in the U.S., it’s an exotic bird. For people living in Australia—at least in all the parts we visited—it’s as common as a blue jay or mockingbird is to us.
That was impressed me most about this beautiful bird; just how common it was from Queensland down through South Australia. What impressed me almost as much was what I describe as its inverse proportions: how can such a lovely bird have such an ugly song? Cockatoos are as loud as crows. Maybe even a little louder. And their harsh, raspy squawks are decidedly unpleasant.
They’re also bold and curious birds. One dropped in on the front porch of a cabin on which I was eating my breakfast. It sat a a few feet from me, patiently waiting for a handout, but to no avail.
“Cheeky buggers,” said the cabin’s owner when I told him about it. He said they’re also quite destructive. They’ll chew the bark of trees, and even eat the wood on housing. He said that’s why he had all his cabins’ window casings made from metal. Cheeky, ideed.