Yes - it's true - we have a female named Rambo and a male named Dali. Both were named before we received them and were obviously named before their sex was known.

Rambo was our first bird and still remains very dear to me. For some reason she is more friendly to males. It is my understanding that she was previously kept by a couple who divorced and she went with the man for a few years until he could no longer keep her. I got Rambo from a store in Berkeley called Your Basic Bird.

I should say Rambo got me. It's the typical story of a silly unassuming guy (that's me) looking around a bird store because he thinks he wants a bird and then feeling a tug on his coat from behind only to find a bird in a cage grabbing him and whispering delightful things.

Of course after the guy gets the bird home he realizes that it will never whisper again and now prefers to scream at the top of it's lungs!

Anyway, we worked it out and learned about each other through the process and Rambo and I are life-long buddies (my wife is not as close to Rambo as I am).

Rambo is atypical for a Cockatoo in some ways - most notably is the absence of a profound need to chew everything made of wood. This is not necessarily a bad thing.