Aussie Finch Forum

Can birds eat paddy melons ?
Thats all .

Majors love them, dare say most larger parrots & cockies would give them a go as well. I can't get them over here to humid on the coast for them.

I've seen wild Major Mitchells & Crimson-winged Parrots eating them.

Deb,
In my other life (you know what) I spent a fair amount of time in the far west of the state in remote areas looking for green. It was very common, to see paddy melons on the side of the road (read dirt road) being eaten by Sulphurs, and especially galahs and Major Mitchells. They look like small water melons but that is as far as they go. Will burn your tongue, bitter as buggery. We found a patch one day of watermelons one day,in the middle of nowhere because of the previous flooding they were nice, but in amongst them were the "paddy melons". Not good. The answer is this, "from my observations, paddy melons are more than ok to feed parrots". Just split them open, larger cockies and maybe smaller one will eat them, especially the seeds. Use them and see how you go. They are a natural food source in the far west of NSW.

Are they the small spikey fruited ones (golfball sized), or like minature watermelons (tennis ball sized), they eat both, but the folige & fruit of the small spikey ones are actually poisonous to stock, but doesn't seem to slow the cockies down.

The small yellow one I know as Paddy melon and this one which looks like a mini watermelon where growing together ,the ones I bought home are like this ....

http://blogs.abc.net.au/nt/2009/03/paddy-wack-padd.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

As matcho says they taste about the exact opposite of a nice sweet watermelon.

Never eaten them myself , only ever used them as a weapon against the younger brother ( in my youth of course ).

Hello All,

I always thought that a paddymelon was a sub-species of a wallaby!!!

Cheers
Ripley

It is ..

http://www.pbase.com/tokyohalloween/image/24957981" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Cant feed them to the birds though , they would choke on the fur ....