Black-Cockatoo Project

Tuning in to cockatoo talk

Loud, grating, harsh, "like a rusty windmill". This is how black-cockatoos sound, or so we think. 

What do these sounds mean, and can they be studied for conservation? 

The answer, hopefully, is yes. That's the curious question I'm trying to answer in my PhD project. 

The thing is this: animals make sounds not randomly, but for specific purposes. For some animals, we understand some of these purposes quite well. Like the low-pitched rumbles of elephants can travel really, really far, so they can communicate with each other even when they're kilometres apart. And those gorgeous sopranos of the world, the songbirds, are definitely sort of passive-aggressive, for their sweet melodies are often about claiming stake to their home turf, competing with other birds or convincing the ladies that they have the best genes and, therefore, they should pick them as a mate.

So if we know what animal-speak sounds like, what it means, and how it functions, we can potentially use that to monitor species. 

I am doing this for two endangered populations of black-cockatoos, the south-eastern red-tailed black-cockatoo and the Kangaroo Island glossy black-cockatoo. These red-tails live only in the south-west of Victoria and adjacent areas of South Australia, and the glossies live, well, only on Kangaroo Island (when they became extinct from mainland Australia we started referring to them as the Kangaroo Island glossies). Other less threatened populations (other subspecies) of these birds occur elsewhere in Australia. 

I spend lots of time in the field looking for these black-cockatoos, recording their behaviours and sounds, and, of course, listening to hours of sound recordings. My work focuses mostly on the sounds they make during the breeding season, which means I get to watch and listen to their babies a lot, which is just about the best way to spend time. They are insanely cute, as you can see.

For more, check out my project on the Threatened Species Recovery Hub website. You can also follow my project updates on Facebook and Instagram.