Terrestrial bioacoustics

Black cockatoo acoustics

Black cockatoos, Calyptorhynchus sp., are endangered and specially protected in Western Australia. There is a regular citizen science survey, called the Great Cocky Count, which has provided crucial information on black cockatoo populations.

Cockatoos are noisy. They produce sounds that differ by species, age, gender and behaviour. We want to explore whether passive acoustic listening can provide additional data on population size, distribution and demographics. We are recording Carnaby’s cockatoos near the Curtin University Bentley campus, and red-tailed black cockatoos in John Forrest National Park.

We’re currently looking for students interested in analysing acoustic data and visual observations of black cockatoos, in order to establish a call repertoire of the above two species, to correlate calls with behaviour and demographic parameters, and to potentially look at changes in calling behaviour as a function of human disturbance.