Calyptorhynchus funereus

The yellow-tailed black cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus funereus) is a large cockatoo native to the south-east of Australia measuring 55–65 cm (22–26 in) in length. It has a short crest on the top of its head. Its plumage is mostly brownish black and it has prominent yellow cheek patches and a yellow tail band. The body feathers are edged with yellow giving a scalloped appearance. The adult male has a black beak and pinkish-red eye-rings, and the female has a bone-coloured beak and grey eye-rings. In flight, yellow-tailed black cockatoos flap deeply and slowly, with a peculiar heavy fluid motion. Their loud, wailing calls carry for long distances. The yellow-tailed black cockatoo is found in forested regions from south and central eastern Queensland to southeastern South Australia including a very small population persisting in the Eyre Peninsula. Two subspecies are recognised, although Tasmanian and southern mainland populations of the southern subspecies xanthanotus may be distinct enough from each other to bring the total to three. Birds of subspecies funereus (Queensland to eastern Victoria) have longer wings and tails and darker plumage overall, while those of xanthanotus (western Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania) have more prominent scalloping. Unlike other cockatoos, a large proportion of the yellow-tailed black cockatoo's diet is made up of wood-boring grubs; they also eat seeds. They nest in hollows high in trees with fairly large diameters, generally Eucalyptus. Although they remain common throughout much of their range, fragmentation of habitat and loss of large trees suitable for nesting has caused population decline in Victoria and South Australia. In some places yellow-tailed black cockatoos appear to have adapted to humans and they can often be seen in parts of urban Canberra, Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne. The species is not commonly seen in aviculture, especially outside Australia. Like most parrots, it is protected by CITES, an international agreement that makes trade, export, and import of listed wild-caught species illegal. The yellow-tailed black cockatoo was first described in 1794 by the English naturalist George Shaw as Psittacus funereus, its specific name funereus relating to its dark and sombre plumage, as if dressed for a funeral. The French zoologist Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest reclassified it in the new genus Calyptorhynchus in 1826. The genus name is derived from the Greek words καλυπτός (calyptos) 'hidden' and ῥύγχος (rhynchos) 'beak'. The ornithologist John Gould knew the bird as the funereal cockatoo. 'Yellow-tailed black cockatoo' has been designated the official name by the International Ornithologists' Union (IOC). Other common names used include yellow-eared black cockatoo, and wylah. Wy-la was an aboriginal term from the Hunter Region of New South Wales, while the Dharawal name from the Illawarra region is Ngaoaraa. Scientist and cockatoo authority Matt Cameron has proposed dropping the 'black' and shortening the name to 'yellow-tailed cockatoo', explaining that shorter names are more widely accepted. Within the genus, the yellow-tailed and the two Western Australian white-tailed species, the short-billed and long-billed black cockatoos, form the subgenus Zanda. The red-tailed and glossy black cockatoos form the other subgenus, Calyptorhynchus. The two groups are distinguished by their juvenile food begging calls and the degree of sexual dimorphism: males and females of the latter group have markedly different plumage, whereas those of the former have similar plumage. The three species of the subgenus Zanda have been variously considered as two, then as a single species for many years. In a 1979 paper, Australian ornithologist Denis Saunders highlighted the similarity between the short-billed and the southern race xanthanotus of the yellow-tailed and treated them as a single species, with the long-billed as a distinct species. He proposed that Western Australia had been colonised on two separate occasions, once by a common ancestor of all three forms (which became the long-billed black cockatoo), and later by what has become the short-billed black cockatoo. However, an analysis of protein allozymes published in 1984 revealed the two Western Australian forms to be more closely related to each other than to the yellow-tailed, and the consensus since then has been to treat them as three separate species.