It was born in 1796, when photographs did not even exist.
Its name was Cocky Bennett, a sulphur-crested cockatoo said to have lived 120 years. It spent its first 78 years sailing across the South Pacific alongside Captain George Ellis, circumnavigating the world about seven times. When Ellis died in 1887, the bird changed owners several times before ending up at the reception desk of the Sea Breeze Hotel in Tom Ugly’s Point, Sydney, Australia. There it became a local celebrity: without a single feather during its last 20 years of life, but with such a sharp tongue that even the governor of New South Wales would visit it.
The curious part is what happened to its cage. Someone hung a donation box next to it, and people who came to hear its phrases ended up leaving coins. Over time, that money was enough to fund three complete beds at St George Hospital, each with its own plaque.
It died in 1916, at an estimated age of 120 years, becoming one of the longest-lived cockatoos on record. Today it remains there, stuffed, at the Carss Cottage Museum in Blakehurst, as if waiting for someone else to leave a coin.