Long-Billed Corella

Overcast afternoon, with a thunderstorm looming. I took Hongyao's car back to PC instead of cycling. The car travels along the same route by which I cycle home, except that I usually cycle on the pedestrian walkway, which is on the side of the road going in the opposite direction as that towards home. Travelling on the 'correct' side of the road today, I got a closer look at the flock of cockatoos which I thought were the common Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos.

They were white, but to my surprise, they had no 'sulphur' crests and they had splashes of red around their eyes and cheeks. This was atypical of SCCs or Galahs, which are red and grey without any white. According to the picture in my field guide, these are Long-Billed Corellas.

Long-Billed Corellas feed in large flocks on the ground (which was what they were doing when observed). They are white with distinctive long upper bills and bluish bare skin around eye, and pale yellow on underside (car went too fast for me to see). They have orange-red lores, foreheads, and splashes at throat and breast (close enough). The location shown on the map showed Adelaide and western Victoria (which I was at), and their habitat is 'red gum woodland, farmland'. Next to the ground where they were feeding was this bunch of red gum trees, and further down the road is huge patches of farmland.

Such closely matched descriptions quite confirms my 'diagnosis'. There is another species called the Western Corella, which looks similar to the LBCs except that they have bright yellow on their underside instead of pale yellow, and have shorter bills. They are however endangered and have been observed in remnant woodland on western Australia, so it's not likely they were the birds seen today.