subject: Glossy Black Cockatoo - An Overview [print this page] Glossy Black Cockatoo - An Overview Glossy Black Cockatoo - An Overview
If one intends to travel in the eastern fringes of Australia, venturing among the wildlife in the open forests and woodlands, it is possible to spot something that resembles a North American hawk with a plumage of a Mexican crow. In case that happens, he or she is not seeing things that are born out of colorful imagination. There is indeed a bird that possesses such fierce and dark beauty. They are called Glossy Black Cockatoo Parrots. For a group of exotic birds known for their intelligence, playfulness and character; they do look quite intimidating.
The Glossy Black Cockatoo was first described by the aristocratic Dutch naturalist Coenraad Jacob Temminck, the first director of National Natural History Museum at Leiden, Netherlands. Its complete scientific name is Calyptorhynchus lathami, with its secondary title a namesake of John Latham, the 17th Century grandfather of Australian ornithology. What makes Glossy Black Cockatoo unique from other types of Black Cockatoo is their sexual dimorphism. There is a vast difference that distinguishes males from females in the demarcation of the plumage.
An adult Glossy Black Cockatoo Parrot grows to be about 46 to 50 centimeters in length. The appearance of a male Glossy Black Cockatoo Parrot is that the majority of them are black with chocolate-toned brown head and attractive red patches on their tails. The females, however, have a duller dark brown plumage, with flecks of yellow in the tail and the collar.
In 1993, there are three subspecies for Glossy Black Cockatoos, although there are opposing expert views about the necessity for the classification given their nearly unconvincing disparities. These are C.I. lathami in Queensland and Malcoota, the C.I. erebus in Central Queensland, and the C.I. halmaturinus in Kangaroo Island.
These birds usually feed on seeds of a she-oak in the wild. Like most species of parrots, the Glossy Black cockatoo Parrot is protected by The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, also known as CITES. They are place in the Appendix II list of vulnerable species. Therefore, the import, export and trade of these animals for private domestication are illegal. The Glossy Black Cockatoo are nowhere near threatened according to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act of 1999. But their Kangaroo Island subspecies are already considered endangered, their population numbering about 100 individuals, which is clearly an inch from extinction.
