Since moving to the Blue Mountains late last year I’ve made some new friends including a King Parrot and a Magpie. The young male King Parrot sits on my back landing and looks through the glass door into my study when the bird-feeder is empty. Maggie, the Magpie, perches on a window sill and looks into the kitchen when she is hungry and notices I am feeding myself.
They are both rather bold birds.
There are usually three or four King Parrots in the trees in the vicinity of the bird-feeder that hangs in my backyard. Over the last few days an old King Parrot, in fact a female so lets call her a Queen Parrot, has been mostly just resting on the back lawn.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
Hasbeen says
October 18, 2008 at 10:50 pmBe careful of that parrot Jen, they are out to take over the world.
I used to have fresh tree picked apples apricots peaches mandarins & lemons. Here in SE Queensland I had to spray them a bit too often, so I let the fruit fly get them, all but the lemons, but picked them before they could mature, & fed them to the horses. They loved this idea.
Now, however, all this has changed. The poor horses don’t even get a look in. First it was a pair of kings, but then they brought some mates, 4 rosellas.
Now my apples are just hanging cores before they are half grown, the peaches & apricots land on the ground, half grown, with one bite out of them, the magpies, that I thought were my friends, ate the mandarines. Some damn thing even cleared the mulberry in just a day, before they were ripe, of course.
Then the kings invited a couple of white cockatoos, who got under the net, & chewed half the lemons.
Even threatening to empty their bird bath, has not brought them into line.
No Jen, they may be pretty, & they do get the fruit fly, while they are still grube, but I doubt they have your best interests at heart.
Vicki says
October 23, 2008 at 3:13 pmDearest Birdwoman,
I miss you and have often thought and spoken about our visit to your lovely home in the Blue Mtns. The first thing you did, b4 we even spoke, was to take me to your back window and there on your lawn was a herd of cockatoos grazing greedily and noisily as only members of the parrot family do.
I miss the birds in the Chelmer garden ans it gives me great delight when I return to sloly rise to consciousness in the mornings to the sounds of the local birds and then to watch their antics from my bed. Bruce the bushbturkey still visits and runs to me like a pet dog when I call him. He loves cheese and is always stealing the small pieces which I put out for the butcher birds.
Want to visit you and meet your Queen parrot. She’s gorgeous!
Much love to you and urs.
Will catch up soon.
Vickixxx
PS Bell birds in the bush near where we live but oh how I miss the contact with birds which I can never take for granted.