Blog Archive

Hi All

Things have slowed down a little since the last entry, however we have had two momentous occasions. Firstly our little Cocky has been given a name; the staff involved in rearing her have chosen to call her Seisia. This name was chosen from the many entries we received from the website naming competition.

The exert below is directly from the naming competition and Shane sums up very nicely why we liked the name.

Seisia (pronounced 'say-sha')
Seisia is the closest town/beach to the Torres Strait on Cape York. It is a place where I have seen Palm Cockatoos feeding in Beach Almond trees many times and is a stunning location. This name also represents the link between the bird's parents with one being from Cape York while the other is believed to be from New Guinea origin. The Torres Strait is the gateway to PNG from Cape York and Australia with Seisia being the local port from the mainland. While 'Seisia' does not have a cultural meaning that I can find, it does acknowledge the link between the natural range of the Palm Cockatoo subspecies in Australia and Indonesia/ PNG while being culturally aware. It is also a very short, sharp and easy to pronounce name that sounds feminine for a young Palm hen... 'Say-sha'.
Shane Hancock

The Bird Team would like to thank everyone who entered a name and hopefully in the future we may have more chicks that need names for those that missed out this time.

The second momentous event is that Seisia is now actually eating some food on her own. She still isn’t eating enough to be classed as weaned but she is getting there slowly but surely.

To encourage her and to support her weaning effort we have to carefully balance a slow reduction in the formula that we are feeding to get her a little hungrier to encourage more eating by herself. We have to be careful not to move too fast or she will become too hungry and her weight will drop too low. If this happens she will focus 100% on the fact that she thinks she is starving to death and put all her energy into begging for food from us rather than eating it herself.

She is also still very easily distracted from her food. Last Friday she spent all day singing and playing in the rain instead of eating. Her vocal repertoire is growing and she often answers and imitates the calls that she hears from her parents which are housed nearby. She has also attempted to eat her first macadamia nut. However her enthusiasm was not matched by her skill or strength of her beak and so far she is nowhere near cracking one.

Hopefully in the next month or so her skill levels and strength will improve to the point where she is eating enough on her own that we can wean her completely.
Once Seisia is weaned we can then focus on socializing her with the adult birds….another big step. I’ll keep you all posted.

Cheers

Trena 
Bird Keeper, Adelaide Zoo