Sulphur-crested Cockatoo

The idea for this research was born in December 2010 when John and Adrian drove from Sydney to Canberra to attend the Ecological Society of Australia conference. At the time Adrian was in the middle of his doctoral research looking at how parrots have colonised and adapted to the urban environment. Sulphur-crested Cockatoos have changed their distribution over the last 20 years, expanding from remnant woodland areas to be common across the Sydney region. However, no studies had assessed Cockies' behaviour in either natural woodland habitats or the recently colonised urban environment. Importantly, tree hollows are a limited resource in urban areas as there are fewer large old trees; remnant eucalypts in particular are naturally pitted with hollows of various size and shape, the hollows large enough for a Cockie to nest in can up to 100 years to form. Hollows are integral to Australian fauna as over 300 species rely on hollows for shelter for reproduction.

In 2014 we commenced GPS tracking existing wing-tagged Cockies aiming to learn more about their behaviour, specifically foraging, roosting and habitat preferences. The wingtag resighting data has allowed us to learn a lot about the birds' movements and in particular their foraging movements within urban areas. However, we have recorded few records of the birds using natural areas for the obvious reason that few people are around to record the birds' presence. With the GPS transmitters we aim to determine if the birds use urban areas more frequently than natural areas. The transmitters we are using weigh 20g (this equates to ~2.5% of the mass of a 800g cockatoo), are solar powered and can record a GPS position up to every 30 minutes. The data collected is transmitted via the GSM mobile phone network each day so we can see in almost real-time the bird’s movements. The ability to track existing wing-tagged birds enables us to compare their known movements from reported sightings with the GPS movement data. Birds are tracked for a short period (e.g. 1-3 months) and then recaptured to remove the transmitter.