Most people are lucky to get a fleeting glimpse of this unique and majestic creature flying overhead. Palmies are infamous for being skittish and elusive. Video: Elusive palm cockatoos caught on film.Between us, PhD student Miles Keighley and I currently work over more than 10 Cape York sites, recording vocal and display behaviours in an effort to better understand this bird, and determine the extent to which its populations are genetically related. Thanks to a grant from the Hermon Slade Foundation, Rob was able to employ me to do the groundwork and find the answers. These questions and more have been a source of fascination for Professor Robert Heinsohn of the Australian National University in Canberra. Since the discovery of the behaviour in 1984, drumming by palmies has been a mystery to scientists who’ve puzzled over what the behaviour entails and in what context it occurs. This is clearly an example of sticks being used as tools, but unlike Jane Goodall’s famous chimpanzees, which use tools to forage, palm cockatoos don’t obtain treats in return for drumming. Like no other creature in the world, palmies fashion thick sticks from branches, grip them with their feet and bang them on trunks and tree hollows. If that’s not intriguing enough, perhaps more curious is their drumming behaviour. On occasion, when their mood is right, their bald red cheeks can flush with blood, turning from pale red to deep scarlet. Cockatoos are found in New Guinea, Indonesia, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands and Australia – and of the 21 known species, the palmy is the heaviest and one of the largest. It’s no wonder, because it is a spectacular species. Despite the fact that the nearest city, Cairns, is 700km away, birders flock here from around the world and brave dirt roads and river crossings to see the iconic palm cockatoo in the wild. We’re near the Lockhart River in a remote part of the Cape York Peninsula, far north Queensland.
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