I enjoy documentaries because I’ll never see for myself many of the animals and locations they splash across my television screen. In an attempt to work through the backlog of recorded programs I have, I watched a National Geographic program called “Australia, Land of Parrots.” Frankly, I had no idea so many parrots called Australia home.

I also finally learned the difference between a cockatoo and a cockatiel. Briefly, cockatoos are any parrot species with a movable head crest, a gall bladder, and a few other anatomical features. Cockatoos are parrots, but not all parrots are cockatoos.

Cockatiels are but one of the 21 cockatoo species.

And cockatoos are even more centred on Australia than parrots in general. According to Wikipedia, 11 cockatoo species are found only in Australia, 7 occur in Indonesia, New Guinea, and other south Pacific islands, while 3 species occur in both New Guinea and Australia.