Palm cockatoo

The largest of the cockatoos

The palm cockatoo (Probosciger aterrimus) is the largest living cockatoo and has the largest beak of the entire parrot order. Its plumage is a smoky grey-black, topped by a long, erectile crest of pointed feathers. Two patches of bare red skin stand out on its cheeks and flush an even deeper red when the bird is excited or alarmed. It is the only species of its genus.

Habitat and range

It lives in the rainforests and woodlands of New Guinea, the Aru Islands and the far northern tip of the Cape York Peninsula in Australia. Unlike many cockatoos, which gather in noisy flocks, it tends to keep to small groups of only a few birds.

Behaviour and diet

With its powerful beak it cracks open very hard seeds, nuts and fruit that other birds could not break, supplementing its diet with shoots and insect grubs. It is famous for an extraordinary behaviour: during courtship the male grabs a stick or seed pod and uses it as a drumstick to beat rhythmically on a hollow trunk — one of the very few cases of tool use among birds.

Did you know?

Each male seems to have its own recognisable rhythmic style. Breeding is very slow: a pair often raises just one chick every one to two years, which makes the species especially fragile.

Conservation

The IUCN lists it as Near Threatened. Forest destruction, fires and capture for the illegal exotic pet trade threaten its populations, which recover extremely slowly because of their low reproductive rate.