PLATE XII. 
MICROGLOSSI A! ATTERIMUM {Gray). 
GREAT PALM COCKATOO. Genus : Microglossia. 
fpiIE main characteristic that distinguishes this Cockatoo from others is its enormously developed bill, much 
compressed at the sides and curved at the tip, which is long and very sharp, a provision of nature that 
admirably adapts it for tearing away the sheath that protects the tender shoots of young palms, a food of 
which it is extraordinarily fond. The lower mandible is much smaller than the upper, and appears still less 
from the thick covering of feathers that almost hide it. 
In the adjustment of its head feathers the Microglos&um is unlike any other Crested Parrot, the crest 
being a hollow circle of tapering feathers that stand up some five inches high over the forehead and shorten 
towards the back. Being of an irritable temperament, the bird erects his crest on the smallest provocation, 
which adds much to the sullen ferocity of his generally forbidding aspect. The tail is even and rather long. 
The tarsi are very short and covered with small scales ; the two middle toes are proportionately long, and nearly 
equal. The front of the throat and cheeks are entirely bare of feathers. 
This bird is represented by only one species in Australia, and has the distinctive peculiarity of being 
the sole bond fide Black Cockatoo belonging to these regions. Its appearance is saturnine in the extreme ; its 
disposition very shy, though if caught quite young there is no difficulty in taming it. 
Of strictly arborial habits, the Great Palm Cockatoo makes its home among the tree-tops of the 
densest forests, though it has occasionally been seen on the largest Eucalypti of the more open country, resting, 
apparently, in its passage from one belt of scrub to another. Like the Calyptorynchi, this bird has a slow 
laboured flight, rarely making long excursions. Its food consists of the juicy young stems of the Cabbage-tree 
Palm and the honey-bearing blossoms of other trees. 
The cry of the Great Palm Cockatoo of itself marks it as a distinctive species, for instead of the 
orthodox shrill scream, it utters a low whistle of one note, which sounds not unlike " nweet, nweet." 
The season of nidification is generally in November, for which purpose a hole in the dead branch of 
some lofty gum tree is selected, in which the nest is formed of thin strips of bark, and two very white eggs of an 
unusually round shape are hatched. 
It is a purely tropical bird, being found only in Northern Queensland and the Northern Territory, and 
has been identified at Port Darwin, Port Essington, Norman River, Gulf of Carpentaria, Cape York, and 
Rockingham Bay. 
With the exception of the bare flesh-coloured surface marked with waved red lines round the eye, the 
uniform colouring is a dull black, except on the wings and crest, where the plumage takes a glossy indigo blue 
shade ; irides, brown ; bill and tarsi, bluish-black. In actual size this bird is not so large by a good deal as the 
Banksian Cockatoo. 
