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Little Corella
Cacatua sanguinea
-27.357, 151.099
Field Notes
Description:
Cacatua sanguinea, commonly known as the little corella, is a white cockatoo native to Australia and southern New Guinea, and is a member of the cockatoo family Cacatuidae. It has a white body and bill, short crest, blue skin around eyes, pale pink patches between the eyes and bill, and yellow underwing and undertail. The sexes are similar in plumage, and young birds look like the adults, but are slightly smaller. Flocks are often vast and noisy, consisting of up to several thousand birds, although that wasn't the case here. Still, this is the largest flock I have ever seen, maybe upwards of 500 birds, and the noise was deafening!
Habitat:
Spotted in native eucalypts along the shore of freshwater Lake Broadwater, which forms part of Lake Broadwater Conservation Park.... https://parks.des.qld.gov.au/parks/lake-broadwater/about/culture This is a very flat area in a region known as the Darling Downs. NB: Just a little over 12 months ago and this lake was completely dry due to the massive drought that Australia experienced. It's wonderful to see how the lake and bushland has recovered. Birdlife was abundant, and surrounding bushland vegetation was green and lush.
Notes:
Being such a large flock made it impossible to get everyone in the same picture, particularly with so many trees, so I could only photograph smaller groups. At first I was delighted to see them, but after a while they became a bit of a nuisance. As I walked along the lakefront, parts of the flock would fly off ahead of me and scare every other bird away, so I thought I could outsmart them and headed for the trees, trying to walk around them, but my plan failed. I stumbled across a mob of resting kangaroos (last photo). Large males were at the front and I wasn't about to mess with them, so I back-tracked towards the lake. Better screeching birds than potentially aggressive kangaroos! I returned to the area later in the day when the birds had departed.
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