Red-tailed Black Cockatoo

Red-tailed black cockatoos are diurnal, raucous and noisy, and are often seen flying high overhead in small flocks, sometimes mixed with other cockatoos. Flocks of up to 500 birds are generally only seen in the north or when the birds are concentrated at some food source. Otherwise, they are generally rather shy of humans. In northern and central Australia, birds may feed on the ground, while the two southern subspecies, graptogyne and naso, are almost exclusively arboreal. They tend to fly rather slowly with intermittent deep flapping wingbeats, markedly different from the shallow wingbeats of the similar glossy black cockatoo. They also often fly at considerable height.

The red-tailed black cockatoo principally occurs across the drier parts of Australia. It is widespread and abundant in a broad band across the northern half of the country, where it has been considered an agricultural pest, with more isolated distribution in the south. It is found in a wide variety of habitats, from shrublands and grasslands through eucalypt, sheoak and Acacia woodlands, to dense tropical rainforests. The bird is dependent on large, old eucalypts for nesting hollows, although the specific gums used vary in different parts of the country. Cockatoos are not wholly migratory, but they do exhibit regular seasonal movements in different parts of Australia. In the northern parts of the Northern Territory, they largely leave areas of high humidity in the summer wet season. In other parts of the country cockatoo seasonal movements tend to follow food sources, a pattern recorded in Northern Queensland, and New South Wales. In southwest Western Australia, both extant subspecies appear to have a north–south pattern; northwards after breeding in the case of subspecies naso, while movements by subspecies samueli in the wheatbelt can be irregular and unrelated to the seasons.

The red-tailed black cockatoo is protected under the Australian Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Wildlife Protection) Act 2001. These birds are listed internationally under Appendix II of CITES, which allows international trade in live wild-caught and captive-bred specimens, if such exports are not detrimental to wild populations. However, the current Australian restrictions on commercial exports from Australia are not imposed by CITES. C. b. graptogyne is also specifically listed as endangered on the Australian Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. Status of the red-tailed black cockatoo as a species, and as a subspecies, also varies from state to state within Australia. For example: The south-eastern red-tailed black cockatoo subspecies C. b. graptogyne is listed as endangered on Schedule 7 of the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1972 of South Australia. and is the smallest of the species. Though a June, 2012 count of approximately 1500 individuals is a notable increase from the 2007 count of just 1000, it remains in danger of extinction. C. b. graptogyne is also listed as threatened on the Victorian Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act (1988). Under this Act, an Action Statement for the recovery and future management of this species has been prepared. However, it should also be noted that the red-tailed black cockatoo is listed under this Act under its previous Latin name, Calyptorhynchus magnificus. On the 2007 advisory list of threatened vertebrate fauna in Victoria, this subspecies is listed as endangered. The red-tailed black cockatoo is listed as vulnerable on the NSW Threatened Species Conservation Act (1995) Like many Australian cockatoos and parrots, the red-tailed black cockatoo is threatened by the thriving illegal trade in bird smuggling. High demand and high transit mortality mean that many more birds are taken from the wild than actually sold. In 1997, the Northern Territory Government's Department of Natural Resources, Environment and The Arts (now defunct) proposed a plan for management of the trade in eggs and nestlings of C. b. macrorhynchus. To date the plan has not been implemented. The Australian Senate inquiry into the Commercial Utilisation of Australian Native Wildlife concluded in early 1998 that routine capture and commercial use of adult wild birds should be prohibited. The bird is part of an annual census, the Great Cocky count, that has been held every year since 2009 to track the population change of Red-tailed and other black cockatoos.