A few years ago I started regularly noticing Kookaburras in my local area
with orangey breasts. This had me puzzled for a while but then I found one
bathing in wet clay in the bottom of an embankment. It appears they did
this so much that they had created a round depression where the wet, orange
clay pooled.
You sometimes see a similar staining on Little Pied Cormorants, according
to Pizzey from impurities in the water.
I'm not saying that staining is necessarily the case with Peter's cockatoo,
but it came to mind.
Cheers
Carol
Carol Probets
Katoomba NSW
At 6:27 PM +1000 29/8/03, John Reidy wrote:
> Peter,
>Some years ago I was travelling to Leeton with Geoff Duggan to see a Long
>Toed Stint and we saw a very red cockatoo beside the road. We stopped and
>went back to have a look and found it to be a Sulphur Crested Cockatoo
>which had bathed in a puddle of very muddy red water (it was still
>bathing). The bird was coloured from head to toe the same colour as the
>mud. Could your bird and others be a cleaner version, i.e. having washed
>most of the colour out in subsequent cleaner water?
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