Many compare their call to the sound of a drawn-out creaky door." They are a Canberra icon If you can't get close enough to identify it, try listening instead. "Their most distinctive trait is their call that is often heard while they are in flight. "They are not as commonly spotted as other similar sized parrots and should certainly not be mistaken for the much more common, but also beautifully coloured, galah." "The males boast a spectacular red head and both the males and females have a wispy crest." "Gang-gangs are an incredibly beautiful parrot," Taylor says. Gang-gangs, one of 14 cockatoo species in Australia, are crowd favourites for their slate-grey feathers with blushes of pink, the male's distinctive red crest, and their quirky call. We asked our gang-gang guru what we know about the birds, what we still need to find out, and what makes these charismatic cockies special. No formal research or monitoring has been conducted about the species, says Stacey Taylor, a Master's student at The Australian National University (ANU) who is studying the patterns of occupancy of the gang-gang across the ACT. That became clear in the 2021 Bird of the Year poll, where they finished third out of 50 Australian native birds.ĭespite their popularity, we don't know a lot about them. As a result, it is set to be listed as endangered under the threatened fauna of Australia.They are the faunal emblem of the Australian Capital Territory, but enthusiasm for the gang-gang cockatoo stretches far beyond the Canberra bubble. Between 28 and 36 per cent of the species' distribution was impacted by the fires. In July 2021, an Australian Department of the Environment and Energy spokesperson stated the population has declined by approximately 69% in the last three generations, or 21 years and in addition to this decline, the species has suffered direct mortality and habitat loss during the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season. Habitat is defined to include "an area periodically or occasionally occupied by a species". Damage is defined to include "damage caused by removing any part of the habitat". This protection status as a threatened species makes it a Tier 1 criminal offence for a person or corporation to knowingly damage the bird's habitat. It is protected as a vulnerable species under the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 (NSW). As a result, the gang-gang is now listed as vulnerable in New South Wales. Loss of older, hollow trees and loss of feeding habitat across south-eastern Australia through land clearing has led to a significant reduction in the numbers of this cockatoo in recent years. However, more recent molecular phylogenetic analysis places it in the Cacatuinae clade, not the Calyptorhynchinae, and having diverged from the palm cockatoo ( Probosciger aterrimus). The gang-gang cockatoo was thought to be a distinctive early offshoot of the Calyptorhynchinae (black) cockatoos. The classification of the gang-gang cockatoo has always been controversial due to the unusual appearance and coloration of the bird, especially its sexual dichromatism. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised. The genus name combines the Ancient Greek kallos meaning "beauty" and kephalē meaning "head". The specific epithet is from Latin fimbriata meaning "fringed". The type locality is the Bass River in the state of Victoria. The gang-gang cockatoo is now the only species placed in the genus Callocephalon that was introduced in 1837 by the French naturalist René Lesson. Grant coined the binomial name Psittacus fimbriatus. In 1803 the British Royal Navy officer James Grant included an illustration of the gang-gang cockatoo in his book describing a voyage to the colony of New South Wales in Australia.
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