Housing for the birds

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Recently I wrote about nesting boxes being supplied for glossy black cockatoos on Kangaroo Island. Another good news story on a similar theme is happening on Cape York Peninsula in the far north of Queensland, where conservationists have been installing artificial hollows on trees hoping to entice palm cockatoos to use them as nesting places. I’ve written about palm cockatoos before too. They’re the ones that use sticks to drum rhythms to attract mates. Logging, land clearing and natural disasters such as bushfires, have resulted in a scarcity of suitable nesting sites for the big, 60-centimetre-long palm cockatoo (Probosciger aterrimus). It is believed that there are fewer than 2,000 of these birds still in the wild. It can take 250 years or more for hollows to become large enough for these highly endangered birds. Natural hollows may be carved out by termites or fungi but it still takes a cyclone or similar to snap off the branches to expose the hollow. Now, the first baby palm cockatoo has fledged from one of these artificially-placed hollows. There is more information here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-29/palm-cockatoo-hatching-from-artificial-nest/106498256. Obviously, conservationists are beyond delighted as the birds are very fussy about where they’ll make their home. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia’s Jim Bendon.