I did a post recently about a few Rainbow Lorikeets who appeared to have moved into our garden and I thought I would do a follow-up on them.
In the beginning there were only six of these brightly coloured critters hanging around and they came and went at random.
I wasn’t too pleased about the attention they were giving to one of my tomato plants out there but I was enjoying seeing them so I just let the plant destruction go.
Still eating my tomatoes 😦
Well, here we are a few weeks later and they are still hanging around. Not just a half-dozen anymore though… Yesterday I counted 32 squabbling out there!
Number 2 son has become something of a bird whisperer, in the morning he goes out in his dressing gown with a bag of seed, makes a few high-pitched squeaks into the garden, and throws a couple of handfuls of seed out into the grass like he is feeding the chooks. Within minutes they are flying in from all directions to take over the garden.
After school the process is repeated, another few handfuls in the grass and the birds descend for dinner.
They are so noisy and I can see that I will never get a single tomato off that poor plant, but because they are beautiful they are getting away with murder!
Grazing Lorikeets.
They’re beautiful! Impossible to see them as pests! 🙂
Tell that to my tomatoes! 😉
The Man and I noted the other day how them being so lovely has let them get away with so much. They have mad, red eyes and are real bullies too so we think the beauty is only on the outside 🙂
Brilliant lawn picture. They make your grass look greener.
They do don’t they. I’m just glad that they only eat the seed scattered there and haven’t started pulling up my hard fought for grass.
All I get is a bunch of crows rooting around, eating my tomatoes – nothing pretty like you get.
Damn! At least these guys entertain us while they are destroying stuff 🙂
No gorgeous lorikeets here either but if the state of my fruit trees is anything to go by, /someone/ is getting well fed. 😦
Possums? At the very least they could leave you a thank you note 🙂
No thank yous but they do leave the stones, picked clean. 🙂
They are definitely the boss… they chase off the other birds. Usually only our Maggies make a stand, and they chase off the other birds as well 🙂 They eat our oranges and the neighbours mandarins but like your tomatoes, no-one seems to mind too much, as they are colourful & personable, and have qualms about making their wishes known.
Amazingly we found out what is Lorikeet kryptonite this morning. We have a Butcher bird who lives quietly in the garden and this morning it had obviously had enough of the noisy buggers.
It cleared the garden twice with very little effort even though it is smaller than a Lorikeet! It zoomed past the windows a few times in hot pursuit of a single one just inches off its tail. It was so funny we were late for school after sitting there watching it!
Very pretty and personable visitors. I hope they don’t disappear one day as mysteriously as they arrived.
I hope they stay too, I might have to buy some strong netting for my tomatoes in the future though… 🙂
So much better than the city pigeons that hang out on my window sill taunting my cat.
They certainly make the view a bit more interesting. 🙂
Number 2 son got up early this morning (Saturday) while the Man and I were still in bed and spread an unreasonably large amount of seed on the grass. I counted more than 50 birds out there at the peak of the traffic…. We have requested that he show a bit of restraint next time!
Jack normally chases birds, but even she has given up worrying about them. When she is inside they strut up and down in front of the glass door and she just watches from inches away without lifting a hair.
50 Birds!!! That would be deafening. I’ve always loved the lorikeets too — they are such noisy, cheeky things. They remind me of fighter planes, as they weave and do acrobatics at incredibly high speeds.
They certainly were noisy! Their squawking woke me up!
This afternoon our garden was a scene of (almost) perfect interspecies harmony. Grazing in the grass among the dozens of lorikeets were half a dozen King Parrots and 4 Bronzewing Pigeons. For a change there was no real fighting and only the odd bit of argy bargy for a better position. Amazing!
They are fantastic to watch when they blast through the garden, and when something startles them and they all leave as one it is an amazing explosion of colour.
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