We have had a flock of unusual visitors haunting our garden in the last few days.
One afternoon the kids were noisily riding their bikes up and down the driveway (one was a zombie, the other a brain; the chase was on!) when I was told to bring my camera and follow RIGHT NOW!
One of the native cherry trees along the driveway had half a dozen Rainbow Lorikeets feeding on it. Surprisingly they were completely relaxed about us wandering around underneath and pointing at them.
We get a lot of parrot visitors here but haven’t had this particular type before. Rainbow Lorikeets are a common type of parrot in Australia but our garden usually has a large and hungry family of King Parrots hanging around. The smaller lorikeets would be silly to get between them and their seeds that’s for sure!
I put a few handfuls of sunflower seeds on the back verandah for them (that seems to be the preferred treat for parrots around here) and wondered if they would stick around.
Within minutes they had realized there was an easy feed in the offing and were vying for the best position at the biggest pile of seeds. They have been back each day for a meal and are very photogenic!
Unfortunately they have poked holes in a few of my ripening cherry tomatoes on the verandah too. Oh well, I got a blog post out of them so it might be a fair trade (as long as they leave them alone from now on!)
Buried words and Bushwa. 
OK, I confess I’m now green with envy. Beggar the Bugs, give me the parrots any day.
I am glad you liked them 😀
We are very lucky to have them hanging around so happily.
I wondered if the reason they have arrived is that their original residence has been affected by any of the bushfires. The bulk of the King Parrots who live here arrived sad and bedraggled a few days after the Black Saturday fires in 2009, we fed and watered them and they never really left.
Oh I didn’t know that. It’s wonderful they’ve found a home at your place. Maybe the Lorikeets can co-exist with them as fellow refugees.
We are making sure that the seeds are widely spread and that there is enough for all. Hopefully any battles will be brief!
Your menagerie is growing. 🙂 They’ll never leave now.
We had an echidna wombling up the side of the driveway on Friday afternoon too. I wish I could attract that kind of critter into our menagerie more often!
lol – Jack might not be so pleased. Those quills are deadly!
Unfortunately for us (but fortunately for Jack) the echidna can’t get into the backyard, we had to Jack proof it and the echidna is probably bigger than her! It is certainly tougher though 😀
Ah, I know about small dog proofing. We had rabbit-proof fencing put in, way back when, but the farm style gates required copious amounts of chickenwire to ensure a very small puppy couldn’t get through.
I’ll bet Jack spends a lot of time at the fenceline watching echidnas and other denizens of the wild passing by. 🙂
What would we do without chickenwire!
Actually Jack spends her time scurrying up and down the hill with old bones that are almost as big as her, chasing birds (grrrr) the neighbours cat (yay!) and wandering innocently past the chooks hoping one will stick its head through the wire and give her a chance to have a taste…. 😀
Aaaah, a dog after my own heart [except for the cat, they’re not all bad!].
Those birds look as if they’re posing just for you Metan! We get cockatoos and the odd rosella but no parrots. I’m so envious. Except for the tomatoes of course. God help any critter that touches my tomatoes!
Even worse, it was my only cherry tomato plant! Number 1 and I love them so they are like gold around here. I would rather sacrifice the big tomatoes than the little ones!
I am really pleased that we have them in the garden. There are heaps of cockatoos in the town and sometimes they send a scout into the garden to scope out the food situation. We don’t want the destructive buggers here so if they are seen out there I go and tell them to get lost. The parrots will feed if you are out there but it is easy to send off the cockatoos just by standing there glaring angrily! 🙂
Where cockatoos are concerned I’ve resorted to throwing rocks. I always miss, and they seem to know it, but they get the message anyway. Or perhaps one mad human on top of cats, a dog and alpacas, not to mention territorial magpies, is just too much for them.
Good on you for keeping them on their toes. They can do such damage and they scare off the other birds too. They look nice but they aren’t good to have around.
When we lived in Lower Templestowe there used to be a guy who’d feed them at about 5pm every night. There were masses of cockatoos! I’m amazed they didn’t become a traffic hazard. I love most animals but cockatoos are definitely best at a distance.
Brilliant picture, their blue heads look great.
Thanks. They have such great colours this photo does them no justice, when they take off it is like an explosion of colour 🙂
The picture turned out nice! It would certainly be a change here if we had parrots visiting our yards rather than the usual robins, starlings and chickadees.
They are lovely to have around although they certainly aren’t shy when it comes to their food.
One King Parrot was on the verandah post early this morning peering in the glass door and looking very annoyed that he had to wait for breakfast. The Man went out with some seed and two of them dived straight on to his arm, stomping down to his hand and not even giving him time to put the seed out. One was even rude enough to give him a peck on the hand 🙂 I think he might have to go out with armour on next time!
They’re so photogenic with their soft but vibrant colour scheme! I wondered whether they might be out of their range because of the fires, or smoke anyway. Lovely visitors to have, even if they do want to test out your cherry tomatoes!
I thought that the fires or similar might be the thing that sent them here. They are clearly used to being fed at a house so they might abandon us and go home soon enough. I hope not though!
They are beautiful birds and a gorgeous photo. 🙂
Thank you 🙂 I love their colours too.
one of my favourite birds! I haven’t seen any since I moved to southern NSW a few years ago, and I do miss them! 🙂
It is like having pets that you don’t really have to take any real responsibility for when parrots live in your garden isn’t it?
I would miss having them around if I moved elsewhere too.
Your Rainbow Lorries are gorgeous 🙂 I love the story about The Man being given the hurry-up by the King Parrots. We have 3 King parrots resident at TA, and about 2 dozen Rainbow Lorries. The RLs feast on our oranges and the neighbour’s mandarins. We were just commenting last weekend that the numbers of all local species of bird life there grown over the past 7 years. Our KP’s are shy but the RLs are brazen. There are 2 in particular that are very familiar with people, and who will fly into the neighbour’s house demanding food, onto our back table or stalk us around the verandah until we feed them – bread & honey on a white dinner plate preferably but seed in the feeder will do. These 2 also come in during storms to shelter in our back area… I have photos that I will post if I ever find time 🙂
Wow! I am surprised that your Lorikeets don’t get on the phone and demand a bit of attention if you stay away for too long!
I love the “bread & honey on a white dinner plate”, that is fantastic. I might have to give it a go too. They will have to be satisfied with an ice-cream container lid for a plate at the start although they might get the good china if they learn to ask for it 😉
It is good to hear that your bird population has grown, I have noticed that the last week has bought more and more birds in and I wonder if it is the hot weather making them search for easier pickings?
I have a large shallow glazed pot out in the front yard and have been making a point of keeping it topped up with water. It has been a very popular hang out lately for quite a variety of birds even though we are only a short hop away from a river. Nobody is enjoying the heat are they?!
We were also just commenting that this way is a lovely way to ‘have birds’ rather than in cages… all care & no responsibility 🙂 We can lose a few hours just watching or feeding whoever decides to hang out. We use glazed pot saucers as feeders & bird baths, and even though the river isn’t far, they are very popular and well patronised. The heat has been hard on everything, and then the storms but we did welcome the rain – our tanks are full and the garden green but no damage thank good ness. I try not to overdo the bread & honey but I figure like us a few treats are ok. I think we are just one stop on the birds’ food map – they have quite a few fans. The locals are quite generous – we had a quiet fox at one stage, and discovered half the village was feeding it…
Bird watching can be a real time waster can’t it? One of us is always wandering up to the chooks to see what they are up to or peering out of the window to keep an eye on the parrots.
Glad to hear your TA garden is green and the tanks are full. We went to visit a friends new place on the western side of Melbourne while we were away and they haven’t seen a drop of rain since the bought it, the tanks are low and the grass crackles underfoot. As I write this it is raining quite heavily outside and I can almost hear the greedy slurping coming from our moisture deprived plants. Australia is a place of contrasts isn’t it!
Bring on the rainy weather I say!! 😀
We try not to overdo the critter treats too but I love that you had a local fox so spoilt that it didn’t have to bother the wildllife 🙂
They are beautiful!
I have to admit to a slight fear of large birds — and parrots in particular. I had to do some serious research before I wrote the Cockatoo character in Bram Stoker’s Summer Sublet. (Exotic pet store field trips, the zoo, etc.) But the idea of seeing them in the wild is WONDERFUL!
Parrots can be quite…. umm… assertive (pushy might be a better description though!) so you wouldn’t be the only one to be wary of them!
We have a very well-known wildlife sanctuary in a town nearby and they do a free-flying bird of prey display a few times a day. You sit in an amphitheatre and during the talk the birds are encouraged to fly low over the heads of the crowd.
It is a great display and the birds swoop close enough that their wings can brush your head. Each time we have been there are a few involuntary screams heard from embarrassed people who might have been more terrified than they would be willing to admit 😀
I think that seeing birds in the wild is much better than having them in a cage anyway. We often have a few majestic Yellow-Tailed Black Cockatoos gliding slowly through the garden. They rarely stop although I would love them to move in. They are very large and are more like slient black aeroplanes rather than their brothers, the white, raucous, flapping cockies that annoy me (and Meeka too). If they were caged we would never get to see them looking at their most mysterious best 🙂
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