Captivating Corellas

Corellas are smallish (for cockatoos) white cockatoos, but whoever it was who was responsible for the design, I feel that the bald patches around the eye weren’t such a good idea in the looks stakes. The Little Corella got off relatively lightly as the blue is, at least, fairly original.

Corellas are fairly common and are particularly noisy at dusk when going through their bedtime routine. I didn’t get a chance to photograph them, though, until I was on my way to the supermarket in Jabiru. Jabiru’s the largest – uh, the only – town in Kakadu National Park. Like many towns that have grown as administrative centres, it has a slightly expanded feel about it, as if someone drew the town plan on an elastic sheet and stretched it by pulling at the corners. Supermarket, medical centre and other civic amenities were laid out in a spacious grassy area – and a flock of Corellas were enjoying the facilities. Fortunately the roads were also considerably wider than they needed to be, so I could stop and watch them from the car.

The Corellas were feeding on long thin seed pods. Clearly their motto was one foot good …

… but two feet better:

An alternative to finding the seed pods yourself seemed to be to sidle up to a flock-mate who was attempting to subdue one on the ground, and try and put your own foot down on it:

Even the ensuing fights were conducted at an exaggeratedly slow pace:

Their final piece de resistance in their clowning - which I never managed to photograph - was a slow forward somersault. It looked almost as though they were leaning forward to pick up something small from the ground, and tumbled over. Either that, or it was just part of a Corella’s mission in life to be utterly captivating.