Funny Parrot Admires its Reflection in Australian Traffic Camera

A cheeky parrot brought hilarity to an Australian motorway by checking out its reflection in a surveillance camera. 

The curious corella bird started pecking on the camera lens on a gantry above the highway in Western Australia last week.   

It hogged the limelight from passing cars and would-be traffic offenders as it tried to peek inside the lens of the camera, before several other corellas joined their friend and flew away.

The bird, a type of cockatoo, has been nicknamed ‘Ralph’ after it amazed traffic camera operators on Perth’s Kwinana Freeway.

Three types of corella – the little corella, the long-billed corella and the western corella – are native to Australia.

All of them have short crests, patches of blue-grey skin around the eye, brown eyes and pale yellow under the wings and tail, according to the Western Australian Museum.

Little corellas are known to entertain themselves by sliding down roofs, dropping off the edge and then flying back to the top again.

Australia also has a population of sulphur-crested cockatoos with yellow crests and a larger wingspan, which are also found in New Guinea and nearby islands.

There are thought to be around 800 bird species in Australia, of which nearly half are endemic because of the continent’s long isolation from the rest of the world.