The Beak

by CALLY
A cool, rainy, bleak day- a nice change from heat, actually. I was very busy indoors renovating a tired bathroom, breaking a few nails in the process. I went out into the backyard at 3pm to eat my well-earned lunch. He was perched at the top of the gumtree. The spikey silhouette of his head caught my eye -ah, a young one.....He looked pretty comical with his few crest feathers and bedraggled look from being damp. He and some other other mature cockatoos stayed a while, preening themselves thoroughly and I took lots of shots. It was late at night when I looked at the photos, and then I noticed how overlong the upper part of his beak was, and how it closed against the side of his lower beak. (Compare with the lower bird in the picture.) That might have come in handy with grooming but I can foresee feeding problems for this unfortunate bird.