Great Birding Moments #17 Musk Lorikeets
Musk Lorikeet
A few days ago I wrote about a recent visit to a private native garden at Cockatoo Valley, north of Adelaide in South Australia. While visiting that garden I photographed several Musk Lorikeets feeding in a eucalypt tree.
Musk Lorikeet
Lorikeets are not easy to photograph. They tend to feed in the thick foliage and rarely show themselves clearly. When they do show themselves, it is usually as a streak of green or red as they dart overhead, heading like arrows to the next tree for another feed.
The individual shown in the above photos was unusual; it stayed out in the open, within camera zoom range, and in focus for long enough for me to take about a dozen shots.
Sometimes you get lucky.
Related articles:
- Great Birding Moments #16 Cockatoo Valley – this article also shows photos of the garden and some of the flowers.
- Rainbow Lorikeets at Wittunga Botanic Gardens – this is one of Australia’s most colourful birds.
- Musk Lorikeets – another encounter with this species, this time in my daughter’s garden in Clare, South Australia.
Those are terrific photos of such active birds!
They’re abundant from time to time in parks around this side of Melbourne (west) but usually you have to rely on their whistling shrieks to work out where they are.
Thanks for the compliment, Snail. The Musk Lorikeet are not common here in Murray Bridge; we tend to have the Rainbows and Purple Crowns instead. The Musks are common in my daughter’s garden in Clare (mid-north SA). They are incredibly hard to see let alone photograph so I feel really pleased this one posed so beautifully for me.
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I believe a group of Musk Lorikeets is called a “clan” of lorikeets. Let me know if there is a better or more appropriate word.
John Long
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