Aussie Finch Forum

Just popped in to say hello.

Gawjus Rainbow lorikeet .
I have blue fronts , real characters .

Beautiful Lorikeet

We have them here in Dubbo now .
never seen them here before but the story goes that some escaped from an aviary and nested in a very old palm tree , this was about 4 years ago and we would see a pair every now and then ..now we see a good sized flock of about 12 regularly .
They would be somewhat inbred but look really good , very vivid colours although a smaller bird than Ive seen in sanctuaries .

Think you'll find they have naturally expanded their range due to the availability of food. Peoples gardens & parks, have created a more abundant food sorce than was there origionally, & is able to sustain the Musks & Littles that naturally occur on your side of the range, so they have migrated west. Same occured with Corellas, & even Galahs, their "natural"range was west of the divide, but due to land clearing, patures & golf courses, they migated east.

Ive suggested this and the fact they appeared after the big floods but apparantly I know nothing lol

Just finished a great book about Australian animals and plants called "The New Nature", by Tim Low, which I cannot recommend highly enough.

Among other things, he details a suite of birds which were originally restricted to arid zones but are now ubiquitous in settled parts of Australia: these include crested pigeons (John Gould lamented in the 1860s that so few people would ever get to see these beautiful birds as so few people visit 'the interior'), galahs (first seen in Sydney during the severe drought of 1941, the Herald wrote articles about these beautiful pink cockatoos being seen in the area), double bars and ibis.

The ibis we see so regularly in Sydney and elsewhere (Melbourne, Canberra, Gold Coast and more recently Brisvegas) were not always so abundant. Apparently they were not often seen in the vicinity of humans until a captive breeding program at Healesville (maybe in the late seventies?) which was a great success. Pinioned captive ibis housed in an open colony attracted vast numbers of wild ones, which became problematic: they learnt to eat the pelleted food meant for marsupials, killed tree ferns by crapping on them, hassled tourists and so on. The one which learnt to open the cafeteria's automatic sliding doors was culled before others learnt the behaviour. In Low's (well-referenced) account, captive pairs were sent to Taronga, Tidbinbilla and Currumbin, where they prospered. Taronga apparently issued a self-congratulatory press release after their first successful captive breeding. In the Gold Coast in particular they soon became a problematic pest: efforts to control them including pricking eggs and dispersing colonies with loud noise and firearms. Some of those birds presumably went towards Brisbane....

The seagulls is a whole 'nother disaster: the largest seagull colony off Sydney before European settlement probably comprised around 3000 birds, at Five Islands off Port Kembla. They have thrived on our waste, and due to the availability of standing water (dams, bore drains, etc...) they are able to venture into the inland in search of food. In 1989 Lake Torrens filled and banded stills flocked to the remote salt pan to breed; this was the first time people saw hordes of silver gulls taking eggs and chicks and 60% of nests were destroyed by gulls. When Lake Eyre filled in March 2000, the gulls arrived in numbers and the rate of predation of eggs and young of banded stilts by silver gulls was nearly 100%. Only 322 chicks survived. When the lake filled again in April-May, the stilts returned: after six nights of carnage they left again en masse. When the stilts tried again on a new island in June, the parkies laid poison baits for the gulls, killed some thousands of them, and the 36,000 stilts that bred reared about 40,000 chicks.

Apologies for a long, off-topic ramble.

Lovely lorikeets.

Thanks Matty,

That is very interesting. I will have to get a copy of Tim's book!

The side effects of human habitation can be good for some, the birds etc who then have access to fresh water and food. And bad for others, those birds etc who lose their feeding and breeding grounds to us or more dominating species that move in.
LML

Beautiful colours. We get them here in Perth but I think they are considered a bit of a pest. Having grown up in a place where the birds we generally saw around were brown sparrows and the likes, I am always blown away to see wild parrots or other brightly coloured birds.