A conservation biologist's perspective

The little corella is now a common sight (and sound) in Sydney but most people don’t realise it’s a new arrival to the city. Like most of the parrot species that tourists to Sydney marvel at, the little corella’s native range didn’t include Sydney- this specimen came from the Gulf of Carpentaria. But it has become well accustomed to city life. Urbanisation and agriculture creates winners and losers of native species, and the corella is a big winner, like other smart adaptable parrot species such as sulfur crested cockatoos, rainbow lorikeets and galahs who also now call Sydney home. 

And yet while the corella has thrived, other parrot species have suffered very badly in the last 200 years- the turquoise parrot and swift parrot that used to be common enough in Sydney are now critically endangered everywhere. Gang gang and glossy black cockatoos are also in trouble. So much change has already happened to Australian wildlife over the past 200 years- and yet so much more change is to come with climate change. Which species will have the adaptations to thrive?

Peter Banks is Professor in Conservation Biology in the University of Sydney's School of Life and Environmental Sciences. His research aims to develop humane, ecologically based solutions for the impact of invasive species.

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A climate change and heritage conservation researcher's interpretation 

Little Corella is a familiar bird as it resembles Parrot, which is a bird I grew up with. In my community, we call the bird (Owiwi). I understand the bird as one that is used to guard the house when the house owner is not at home. The bird gives reports of everything that happens in the house to the house owner when he returns.

In our local language (Yoruba), we say: Eye Owiwi je eye to n rojo ohun gbogbo to sele nile fun onile. In English (translated): Little Corella is the bird that gives account of happenings in the house to the house owner. However, the birds are becoming scarce within the community in current times mainly because people used to hunt for them to eat. This makes them a threatened bird within the community. Some other religious beliefs about the bird is that if you have them in your house, they are not to be put in cage but allowed to fly freely in the house. Doing this brings good blessings and fortunes to the occupants of the house. The belief is that the more the bird crows for people to hear, the more the fortunes and blessings of the house owners. 

Olufemi Adetunji is an associate member of the Nigerian Institute of Architects (NIA), Australia ICOMOS, ICOMOS Nigeria, a member of the Youth Forum Sub-Committee for ICOMOS GA2023, a member of Youths in Conservation of Cultural Heritage (YOCOCU), project leader at University of Newcastle ENACTUS team, and the founding partner of NERD Multi-Concept. He is Newton International Fellow at the University of Lincoln, UK.

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A curator and object conservator's interpretation 

Little Corella: genus Cacatua species sanguinea normantoni family Cacatuidae 

collected (date not specified) in the Gulf of Carpentaria 350 high x 100 wide x 240 depth (breast to back) 

The Museum’s bird register colloquially describes the Little Corella as the “Blood Stained Cockatoo” and identifies the specimen in the Linnaean system as Cacatua sanguinea normantoni. Ornithologists differentiate this bird from other parrots by its very prominent blue eye ring and a pink tint between the eye and the beak. Analysis has recently discovered this bird’s unique red pigment (psittacofulvin) found in parrot feathers is synthesised internally and unlike other birds, the colourant is not derived from plant sources.1 Unfortunately, the Corella’s red pigment (sanguinea) is considered especially vulnerable to fading.2 The primary taxonomic traits of this “Blood-Stained Cockatoo” (proteinaceous blue eye ring, pink tint) have suffered from ageing, light exposure, and taxidermy and its value as a guide for the species diminished to a curio.3  

1 Kevin J McGraw, Mary C Nogare. “Distribution of unique red feather pigments in parrots.” Biology Letters, Royal Society Publishing,  2005 Mar 22; 1(1): 38- 43.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ articles/PMC1629064/21 July 2023 

2 E. A. Kennedy, Kennedy, "Color variation in museum specimens of birds: effects of stress, pigmentation, and duration of storage" (2010). Bucknell University, Master’s Theses. 25. 

3 Museum audiences are less exacting. Conservators of the American Museum of Natural History, New York have begun to use cosmetic dyes to refresh faded fur-bearing animal displays. Chau Tu, “Bringing Colour Back to the Dead.” [American Museum of Natural History]. Science Friday, 13 December, 2016. https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/bringing-color-back-to-the-dead/. 21 July 2023.  

Michael Bogle is a historian with a background as a museum curator and an object conservator. He prepared the animals from the Australian War Memorial taxidermy collection, a Dickin Medal award-winning WW2 carrier pigeon and the WW1 German defector, a Doberman named Roff  for the Imperial War Museum’s 1983 exhibition “Animals in War”. He has also worked with the “remains” of the Australian War Museum’s specimen, “Horrie, the Wog Dog”.4 

4 “Horrie the Wog Dog.” https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C20313. 23 July 2023. See also Ion Idriess, Horrie the Wog Dog, Angus and Robertson, 1945. 

A historian's perspective 

A little bird with a big personality and a bloodthirsty name! 

In fact this bird has many names, meanings and histories. As an historian I am interested in the history of how this bird came to be named, killed and put in a museum display, and what this tells us about the societies who encountered it. In Indigenous Australia, this bird has been known for hundreds of thousands of years and by different names. Some Aboriginal communities in south-western Australia know this bird as Djayarra (cha’yar’ra).   

In European Australia, this bird was only ‘discovered’ in 1843. The British ornithologist John Gould acquired specimens in Port Essington in the Northern Territory. Gould described the Little Corella in a paper given to the Zoological Society in London and included a brief entry along with a coloured engraving in volume 5 of his lavishly illustrated seven-volume The Birds of Australia (1840-1848). Gould followed Linnaeus’s system of naming species using two Latin words and gave many Australian birds new ‘scientific’ names still in use today. The Latin word ‘Cacatua’ is based on the Malay ‘katatua’ meaning cockatoo. ‘Sanguinea’ is from ‘sanguineus’ meaning blood-stained, and refers to the colouring of the feathers around the eye. ‘Normantoni’, which designates a particular sub-species, was added by the controversial Australian ornithologist Gregory Matthews in 1917. 

The name ‘Corella’ seems to have first appeared in England only in 1885, when an advertisement in the ‘Foreign Birds’ section of the popular newspaper Bazaar, Exchange & Mart mentioned an ‘Australian corella, very tame, fond of children, talks well. Price £5, with cage.’ In this period Australian birds could fetch high prices as exotic pets in Great Britain, but their owners often did not understand how to feed or care for them properly – or got bored of them. This specimen demonstrates the nineteenth-century western appetite for fashioning the bodies of native animals for public display. The Chau Chak Wing museum catalogue entry reflects the violent process of trapping, killing, stuffing and displaying this creature: 

“Description Taxidermied skin and skull mounted (missing perch and stand) with glass eyes and a closed beak.” 

Whatever name it goes by, and despite frequent mistreatment by humans, the Little Corella shows no sign of being forgotten. These birds are noisy, sociable – and adaptable. Not only has this species survived European colonization of Australia but it has adapted to modern agricultural practices. Little Corellas are often seen in grainfields dining on seeds. But this success – the population is thought to be rising not declining – devalues it in the eyes of many. Little Corellas are seen as pests and may be hunted without a permit in some parts of Australia. It pleases me to know that while the nineteenth-century bird in front of us ‘with glass eyes and closed beak’ is forever imprisoned in its display case, beyond the museum other Little Corellas today fly free and feed with their own eyes and open beaks. 

Cindy McCreery
I acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, whose land I walk, work, and gather on every day. 

Dr. Cindy McCreery is Associate Professor of History at the University of Sydney and director of the Modern Monarchy in Global Perspective Research Hub. Her current research and teaching uses visual culture (paintings, engravings, photographs etc.) and objects (like stuffed birds) to explore the relationships between monarchies, colonies and people in and beyond the British empire from the late 1700s to the early 1900s. The university’s museum collections are a constant source of inspiration. Since 2021 many of her undergraduate and Honours History units utilize an ‘object-based learning’ approach grounded in the collections of Chau Chak Wing Museum.  

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Modern Monarchy in Global Perspective

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