BirdingNZ.net

Spent the weekend camping with the kids up Totara Reserve (Pohangina Valley, Manawatu Region) and we were visited regularly by up to six cockatoos. I know the birds have been resident up the valley for a number of years but I have previously only seen one or two, never 6 at once. Also present were a number of rosella, though never more than two or three at a time, plenty of noise though. Add that to the racket imposed by spur winged plovers and the whole place was feeling a bit Aussie-fied. Adding balance was a large number of fantails, kereru, grey warblers, tui, and moreporks at night - just as well.

Now a quirky note - IUPAC adopted the official spelling of sulphur as sulfur in 1990 as did the Royal Society of Chemistry Nomenclature Committee in 1992. I wonder if this will ever be reflected in the naming of this bird? (Or is sulphur a more accepted spelling of the colour?)

Craig.

I know the birds have been resident up the valley for a number of years but I have previously only seen one or two, never 6 at once.

We used to hunt them for capture yrs ago...in a area one would see maybe a couple or even just hear them....
But if stuck around in the eveniings on a high ridge, espec out of breeding season , which is ending now, they start to collect, flying in from huge distances. The collect in a small patch of threes while the big old wise Alpha male wold sit up in a tress directing proceedings. Then they would collect in on or 2 large trees just before sunset, and from a distance, even with binoculars there appears a large 'white water waterfall'
Distrub the flock in their roosting tree and one may not find them again for couple weeks.

So u may just see a couple, but be in the right place at the right time , that population can quickly become 100s...in NZ.

craigsteed wrote: Now a quirky note - IUPAC adopted the official spelling of sulphur as sulfur in 1990 as did the Royal Society of Chemistry Nomenclature Committee in 1992. I wonder if this will ever be reflected in the naming of this bird? (Or is sulphur a more accepted spelling of the colour?)

"sulfur" is the American spelling of "sulphur" -- no surprises that the IUPAC is American! The RSC followed suit basically to keep things standard across the world in science matters. However the spelling sulfur is only "official" in a scientific context, specifically for the name of the chemical - in the same way as there are specific spellings and meanings of words in zoological or botanic contexts. Sulphur yellow is still sulphur yellow here.

What is quirky is the reason behind the Americans spelling it "sulfur". Noah Webster, a deeply religious and not particularly clued-up schoolmaster with "interesting" ideas on the origins of human language, published the American Dictionary Of The English Language in 1828 in which he set in stone his own peculiar views on removing any extraneous letters and changing those letters he felt were "wrong" in English words (his other aim was a more political one, trying to make the American language distinctive and therefore set it apart from actual English), hence now-typical Americanisms such as sulfur, color, aluminum, defense, etc. He also aimed for changes like "tung (tongue) and "groop" (group) but these didn't catch on quite as well!