Research shows Palm Cockatoos make their own drum sticks

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Australia's Palm Cockatoos are known for their love of drumming the males bang rhythmically on trees to attract a mate. A new study has revealed they take great pride in their so called drum sticks designing and even decorating them according to their individual taste.

Transcript

00:00 Lots of wonderful field work right up on the tip of Cape York.

00:05 It's a wonderful part of Australia.

00:09 How many of these palm cockatoos are left in the wild up there?

00:12 Look, it's about a thousand left and the numbers are coming down.

00:17 It's an endangered species and a lot of our works are looking at their conservation needs.

00:22 And so the palm cockatoo is pretty shy.

00:25 So were you often under camouflage when you were observing?

00:29 How did you keep your profile as low as possible?

00:33 It takes a lot of stealth, a lot of know-how, a lot of practice and experience.

00:37 But once you know what you're doing, you sneak up on them really, really quietly through

00:40 the bush and you do wear camouflage, I'm not joking.

00:45 And you get within probably 50 metres or so and if you're happy enough to see them doing

00:50 their drumming display, you get the video camera on them quick smart and you get all

00:54 the footage you can and you really hope that you don't frighten them away.

00:58 And so we're seeing a bit of it now.

01:01 And so yeah, describe for us first of all what they do with this banging and that they

01:04 have different types of drumsticks.

01:06 Yeah, that's right.

01:08 I mean, they're unique in the animal world or in the bird world at least in that they

01:11 make these sound tools.

01:13 They're effectively musical instruments and the males do it as part of a really complex

01:18 display trying to impress the females.

01:21 Females are really choosy and really hard to get, you know, and they won't mate with

01:24 just anybody.

01:25 So the males go into full show-off mode and they have lots of calls and whistles and they

01:29 dance and they erect their crest and they twirl and they carry on.

01:34 And as a climax to it all, they'll go out to the end of the branch and they'll snip

01:37 off either a seed pod or a stick and they'll whittle it down to the size and shape they

01:43 like and they'll go back to the hollow where the nest is and they'll start tapping rhythmically

01:48 on the side of the hollow.

01:50 And the female's watching him all the time.

01:52 She's watching how powerful his beak is when he cuts the branch off.

01:55 She's watching his skill when he hones it down to the right shape and size.

01:58 And then she's really interested in the rhythm that he produces as he's banging because all

02:03 the males have different drumming signatures, just like human drummers.

02:06 They can all be told apart by how they drum, whether it's fast or slow and different flourishes.

02:13 And in this latest study, we worked out that the crafting of the musical tool itself was

02:19 very, very individually oriented.

02:22 So some males always went for a long skinny drumstick.

02:26 Others went for a short and fat one.

02:27 But they were really, really consistent as if they really had an idea of what pleased

02:32 them most and what pleased their female most.

02:35 And they always conformed to that same pattern.

02:36 It was really, really quite fascinating to observe and to come up with that.

02:41 And what seemed to work best for the palm cockatoo in attracting a mate in terms of

02:46 the style of the drumstick?

02:48 Look, that's the interesting thing because whenever a male was old enough and experienced

02:54 enough to know how to make a drumstick, and if he had been at that nest hollow for a long

02:58 time and he was obviously mature and knew what he was doing, that seemed to be enough

03:02 to please the females.

03:04 So I couldn't say that there was one type that worked best, but every male doing what

03:08 he was good at seemed to be enough to impress his particular female.

03:11 Yeah, and the females, you could see them watching on really interested?

03:16 Yeah, look, they're only a couple of metres away and they're watching the whole process

03:20 in terms of making the drumstick and then the final display where he bangs it on the

03:24 hollow and they are watching intently.

03:27 And they only lay one egg every two years.

03:30 So they're really, really hesitant to breed at all.

03:34 And they just won't go there unless they are truly turned on by the male's performance.

03:39 So, yeah.

03:40 Yeah, and they're a beautiful looking bird.

03:43 How is the species going overall?

03:45 Well, in Australia, they're endangered and numbers are coming down and the breeding rates

03:50 are way too low and they're losing a lot of their nest hollows due to big bushfires that

03:55 burn down their nest trees.

03:57 So it's a bit of a problem, but we're working very hard on it and the different agencies

04:02 up there, the National Parks and the Indigenous landholders, they're onto it and we're doing

04:06 everything we can to turn that around.

04:09 And when's your next trip planned?

04:10 Look, I was up there last week.

04:12 I was on the Western side in Weepa.

04:15 I'm going to go up there in a couple of weeks.

04:17 It's a beautiful part of the world, huh?

04:19 It really is a fantastic part of Australia.

04:21 It's just so different from anywhere else.

04:24 It's actually more like New Guinea than it is like the rest of Queensland.

04:27 It's like having a little piece of New Guinea on Australian soil.

04:30 Yeah, especially with birds that look like that.

04:32 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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