Endangered
Carnaby's black cockatoo
Zanda latirostris
Carnaby's black cockatoo, also known as the short-billed black cockatoo, is a large black cockatoo endemic to southwest Australia.
Appearance
It is mostly greyish black, with narrow light grey scalloping produced by narrow off white margins at the tips of dark feathers. It has a crest of 2.5–3 cm (0.98–1.18 in) long feathers on its head that form a short crest that can be raised and lowered, and a prominent off-white patch of feathers on its cheek. Its lateral tail feathers are white with black tips, and the central tail feathers all black.
Carnaby's black cockatoo is 53–58 cm (21–23 in) in length with a 110 cm (43 in) wingspan, and weighs 520–790 grams.
It was described in 1948 by naturalist Ivan Carnaby.
Range and habitat
Carnaby's black cockatoo is found across a broad swathe of southwest Australia—mostly within the Wheatbelt region—in places that receive over 300 mm (12 in) of rainfall yearly. The limits of its range include Cape Arid to the east, Lake Cronin, Hatters Hill and Lake Moore inland, and Kalbarri to the north. Breeding takes place in areas receiving 350–700 mm (14–28 in) rainfall a year, from the Stirling Range to Three Springs as well as around Bunbury.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
This call is made by birds in flight, before taking off and returning to the nest. Carnaby's black cockatoos begin breeding from four years of age and mate for life.
Mature wandoo and salmon gum woodlands provide important breeding habitat for the cockatoos as they need large hollows in tall trees. There is competition for nest hollows with western corellas (Cacatua pastinator), galahs (Eolophus roseicapilla), and feral honeybees (Apis mellifera).
In crisis
With much of its habitat lost to land clearing and development and threatened by further habitat destruction, Carnaby's black cockatoo is listed as an endangered species by the Federal and Western Australian governments. The cockatoo is recognised as endangered under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, and as Schedule 1 "fauna that is rare or is likely to become extinct" by Western Australia's Wildlife Conservation (Specially Protected Fauna) Notice 2008(2) under the Wildlife Conservation Act 1950. The population size of Carnaby's cockatoo fell by over 50% in 45 years, and up to a third of their traditional breeding grounds in the Wheatbelt have been abandoned.
The 2016 Great Cocky Count counted 10,919 Carnaby's black cockatoos, indicating the population had declined by 50% on the Perth–Peel Coastal Plain since 2010, dropping by around 10% each year. The total population is estimated to consist of 40,000 individuals.
Carnaby's black cockatoo is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Carnaby's black cockatoo, Wikidata item Q28108429. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
