The yellow-crested cockatoo is found in wooded and cultivated areas of East Timor and Indonesia's islands of Sulawesi and the Lesser Sundas.

[6] The yellow-crested cockatoo's diet consists mainly of seeds, buds, fruits, nuts, and herbaceous plants.

[7] In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included "Le Kakatoes à hupe jaune" in his Onithologie based on a live bird that he had seen in Paris.

[8] Then in 1764, George Edwards included the "Lesser white cockatoo with a yellow crest" in his Gleanings of natural history from a pet bird kept at a home in Essex,[9] and in 1779 French polymath Comte de Buffon included the bird in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux.

Between 1980 and 1992, over 100,000 of these birds were legally exported from Indonesia, yet a German proposal submitted to CITES to move it to Appendix I[17] was not approved.

[19] They are a common sight across the densely populated area on both sides of the harbour, easily spotted in the woods and public parks in the north and west of Hong Kong Island.

[20] An often repeated story is that Hong Kong Governor Sir Mark Aitchison Young released the Government House's entire bird collection – including a large number of yellow-crested cockatoos – hours before surrendering Hong Kong to Japanese troops in December 1941.