Animal Diaries Archive

Carly and Nowra

9 February 2007

Meet Nowra a young Red-tailed Black Cockatoo. Nowra is only 6 months of age and was born here at Australia Zoo. Nowra is joining the roving team and currently I am conducting a lot of the training, getting Nowra used to different locations, different animals and also people too. (This can be a lot for anyone so we need to take things slowly). Due to the young age of Nowra we don’t know whether this little beauty is a he or a she. You see sexual maturity is not until about 5 years of age, a male Red-tailed Black Cockatoo looks very different from a female. The males are completely black except for a beautiful band of bright red approximately half way down their tail, where as the female has numerous yellow speckles on the head, neck and shoulders. The feathers on the under parts of the tail are barred with yellow and yellow/orange.

Red-tailed Black Cockatoo’s are native to Australia, found widespread throughout northern and north-eastern Australia, but occurring in isolated populations across central and southern regions. The Red-tailed Black Cockatoo is classed as common however there are 5 sub-species that are classed as threatened and in some areas endangered. The main threat is loss of habitat, past land clearing for agriculture and softwood plantations having moved much foraging habitat and these habitats are particularly vulnerable to summer fires.

The nest for Red-tailed Black Cockatoos is in a hollow limb or hole in the trunk of a living or dead tree, usually a eucalypt standing near water, most nests are fairly high and inaccessible. It’s believed it can take up to 100 years to form a hollow tree so these trees are very important to these little guys.

Generally the female will lay one egg after a period of 30 days, the young chick will fledge at 12 weeks but it will be a further 3-4 months before it is totally independent from it’s parents. Nowra is every bit of a baby bird at only 6 months of age there is so many exciting things happening, koalas and wombats sure do look different to a little bird and cars, trucks and people sure look funny too. However with her sooky vocalizations and cuddly nature I believe this little bird will be great in the roving team!

There’s never a dull moment in the roving team, now that holidays are over we are busier than ever with staff an animal training so stay tuned for more exciting roving diary entries and I’ll keep you up to date with Nowra’s roving progress.

Thanks and I’ll see you soon!

Roving Carly.