Galah

This small cockatoo is about 35 cm long, with a predominantly pink plumage and light grey wings. Like all cockatoos, it has a crest of erectile feathers.

Birds usually pair for life and live within groups that are sometimes extremely numerous: several hundreds of them, with other species, soaring on fields and plains on the search for food. The Roseate Cockatoo primarily feeds on seeds but also larvae and insects: it usually feeds on the ground. In order to get water, it either drinks from a pond, or it drinks in flight, in the rain, like a swallow.

This is a good flyer, slowly beating its wings like an owl and able to cover long distances but not in a single go; with stop-overs.

In the North of Australia, it lives in the primary mountain forests. More south, it colonises lowland forests. It can also be seen in crop areas and even in urban parks and gardens, but always near water.

The species is common in Australia and is therefore not threatened.

• Name: Galah
• Latin name: Eolophus roseicapilla
• Origin: Australia
• IUCN status: Least concerned
• Cites: Appendix II