The Short-billed or Carnaby’s Black-Cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus latirostris) is a very large (around 50-60 centimetres long) dull black cockatoo with white ear patches and tail feather panels. Carnaby’s Black-Cockatoo is restricted to south-western Australia and is classified as endangered. Males have a black bill and a pinkish eye-ring; females have a bone-coloured bill and a grey eye-ring with broader pale margins to their breast feathers. These cockatoos have enormously strong bills that are adapted to cracking open the hard, woody fruits of the native plants of the Protea family to extract the seeds. Carnaby’s Cockatoos are also carnivorous – they split the twigs of some Eucalyptus trees to extract the larvae of wood-boring insects. They move on to the coastal plain near Perth in the southern autumn, and many congregate in large noisy flocks in Yanchep National Park. Their haunting call is one of my all-time favourites.