Rozalka, you make an excellent point here! It's easy for us Australians to forget that other people have very different experiences with their own birds and with wild birds, depending on where they live.
I live on a large island, so most of our birds are born here and die here. The only ones that are found in other countries are mostly sea birds that migrate.
Australian wildlife is unique and we have strong laws in place to protect it. That's why it's no longer possible to import or export animals in Australia. (Did you hear about the fuss made when Johnny Depp flew his two dogs into our country without declaring them? Australian police stepped in and the authorities sent the dogs back to the US on the same day!) We don't get migratory visitors as you do (eg. the Stork which comes each year to nest in Europe), so we're used to a pretty unchanging population.
In Europe, though, birds don't have borders. They come and go into countries as they please and as they can find food. It amazes me to think of birds coming and going like that. I hear of annual migrations like those of the hummingbirds in the Americas or the raptors that migrate into Europe through Gibraltar and I find it astounding that birds are doing these things every year, but we don't see anything like it here in Australia.
Every few years something amazing happens, though. One year, I spent a short time on Lord Howe Island (400 miles offshore from NSW) with the Bird Observers' Group. There had been a series of hurricanes that year and a Red-tailed Tropicbird had been blown onto the Island. This was a good distance out of its range, so I got to see a bird that would normally never come to my country.
Another time, a European Yellow Wagtail turned up just a few miles from my home. Like many other birdos, I rushed out to get a sight of it! All I managed to see was a tiny speck of a bird with a very different flight pattern and an interesting way of flicking its tail. Sadly, I couldn't get close enough to see the colours or really say I 'identified' what I saw as a Yellow Wagtail. To this day, no one has any clue how that bird came to Newcastle from so far away!
So, beyond a few scanty visitors from other lands, we don't often get to see new birds except in drought years like now. The water in the centre of the country dries up and birds are forced to move closer and closer to the coast in search of water and food. This is how I came to see a Jabiru (Black-necked Stork) and a Pink-Eared Duck and a small flock of Grass Whistleducks and three Magpie Geese and the Yellow-Tailed Black Cockatoos that occasionally visit my yard.
I guess what I'm saying is that my experience of birds and their names is different from those of people in other countries. Bird names are a part of our society because our birds are so obvious and so present every day. It's hard not to know when a flock of Corellas is flying over because they block out all sound except their own! We see Galahs feeding on the roadsides and in parks and gardens every day as well. There's actually a local movement to allow residents to *shoot* the SC2s because of the damage they do. They descend on a street and will strip all the leaves and fruit off the trees in just a few hours, leaving a dreadful mess on the roads as they go. They also like to chomp through coaxial cable, thus cutting off peoples' TV reception. (LOL!) Because the larger parrots are so familiar and so recognisable to all, their names don't vary across the country.
As LaManuka pointed out, smaller parrots like the cockatiel, the Port Lincoln parrot and others can have different names in different places. But I just don't get why anyone would want to rob our parrots of their origins by not calling them Galah and Corella. It's my problem. Leave it with me.
PS. May I ask about your name? It reminds me of the gorgeous aria by Dvorak and the water spirit his song was based on.
