Cockatoos
The crest goes up with every strong feeling, and so does the volume: cockatoos are among the loudest birds kept. They bond hard and they live for decades.
Overview
Cockatoos are large, loud, intensely social Australasian parrots, from around 300 g for the smaller species to well over a kilogram. A sulphur crested cockatoo averages 800 g, runs 45 to 50 cm long with a 103 cm wingspan, and lives 40 years on average in the wild with records to 57.
They are also the parrot most often surrendered. The reasons are consistent: the volume, the destructiveness, and a need for contact that a working household cannot meet.
Temperament
Affectionate to a degree that is genuinely difficult. A cockatoo wants physical contact more or less continuously, and it does not understand being put down.
In the wild they live in flocks from a dozen to several hundred, with some birds posted as sentries in trees while the rest feed. That is the social density the bird is built for. A cockatoo alone in a house for eight hours is the classic case behind screaming and feather destruction, and once feather plucking is established it is very hard to reverse.
Care and grooming
A formulated pellet base with vegetables, nuts in small quantities, and foraging arranged so the food takes work to get. Wild birds are granivores feeding on the ground and in trees on seeds, nuts, fruits, blossoms and insects.
Cockatoo powder down is the heaviest of any parrot. It coats the room, it gets into electronics, and it is what allergic people react to. An air filter is not optional in a house with one, and a household with a genuine bird allergy cannot keep this species.
Living and exercise
40 by 30 by 50 inches as an absolute minimum and an aviary if it can be managed, built from something a cockatoo cannot dismantle, because they can and will open ordinary catches.
The call is very loud and it is designed to travel great distances across open country. In a house it goes through walls, and neighbours in an attached property will hear it every morning. That is worth checking before buying rather than after.
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