Cockatiel
Nymphicus hollandicus
— Where the name comes from
Nymphicus comes from nýmphē: Wagler, who gave the bird a genus of its own in 1832, found it as graceful as a nymph. Hollandicus means “of New Holland”, the name Europeans gave Australia before it was called that. The Italian calopsite preserves an old genus name, Calopsitta, “beautiful parrot”, from kalós and psittakós.
— Facts
- Group
- Birds · Aves
- Order
- Parrots
- Habitat
- Open scrub and dry grassland, always near water
- Range
- Inland Australia; kept worldwide
- Size
- 30–33 cm including the long tail, 80–100 g
- Diet
- Grass seeds, grain, fruit and shoots
- Lifespan
- 10–15 years in the wild, over 20 in captivity
— Characteristics
- 01
Its crest rises and falls with its mood.
- 02
The male has a yellow face and orange cheeks, brighter than the female’s.
- 03
It lives in nomadic flocks that follow the rains across inland Australia.
— What sets it apart
For a century ornithologists argued over whether it was a parakeet or a cockatoo. It has the long tail and slender body of a parakeet, but also the mobile crest, the colouring and some of the habits of a cockatoo. DNA settled the matter: it is a cockatoo, the smallest in the family, the last survivor of a separate lineage. After the budgerigar it is the most widely kept pet parrot in the world, and hand-raised males learn to whistle whole tunes.
