Realistic cockatoo on a perch beside a hanging bell and seed bowl, crest raised and beak open.

Cockatoo Ringing the Seed Bell

With crest feathers flared high, this cockatoo grips a branch perch beside a dangling bell and a bowl of seeds.

🎨 How to color it

Color the cockatoo pearly white with a lemon-yellow crest, give the bell warm brass tones, and fill the seed bowl with tan, cream, and striped brown seeds. Use sharp colored pencils for the layered wing feathers, claw scales, chain links, and wood grain, working from the outer edges toward the center. Add a pale sky-blue wash behind the open beak and raised crest so the bright feathers and little brass bell stand out.

The story behind this coloring page

Kira Counts the Bell — Every afternoon, when the aviary roof turned gold and warm dust smelled like sunflower shells, Kira set herself the same wild little challenge: tap one seed into the bowl, count it, and ring the brass bell only at one hundred. Read the full story →

Every afternoon, when the aviary roof turned gold and warm dust smelled like sunflower shells, Kira set herself the same wild little challenge: tap one seed into the bowl, count it, and ring the brass bell only at one hundred. Ninety-eight. Ninety-nine. Her toes tightened on the smooth perch. Then a gust burst through the roof vents with a WHUFF and spun the hanging chain.

Because of that, the bell clanged early—CLANG!—and three finches zipped down, thinking it was snack time. Because of that, seeds skittered across the rail, under bark, and into a crack where the ants marched. “Not yet!” Kira squawked, flaring her crest like a sail.

She did not start over. She listened: tick, tick, tick went the falling seeds. She counted the ones in the crack, the ones by her claw, the one stuck to her beak. Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred. At last she struck the bell herself, clear and bright, and if you check the perch, you may catch the proud moment after the hundredth seed.