Adelaide Rosella comes to visit
Adelaide Rosella
Yesterday we had a glorious spring morning. We spent a few hours chatting with our daughter who has been visiting over the last few days. We were enjoying being able to sit on the front verandah enjoying the beautiful day.
While chatting – and having a lovely cup of chai tea – my attention was suddenly drawn by the call of an unusual bird in the tree across the driveway. On investigation I found it was a solitary Adelaide Rosella.
This species is common throughout the Adelaide Hills some 50km to the west of Murray Bridge but not at all common around here. We do have the occasional visitor, but this only happens maybe several times a year.
As I moved towards the tree, camera at the ready, an aggressive Red Wattlebird chased the Rosella away. Can’t blame the Wattlebird; it has a nest only a few metres away – not that the Rosella was about to take and egg or chick from the nest.
The photo above was taken elsewhere some time ago.
Read some related articles:
- Eastern Rosella
- Budgerigars
- King Parrot
- Cockatoo close encounter
- So that’s who’s been eating my flowers
- Musk Lorikeets
Read through some more of my articles about parrots and lorikeets here.
Sulphur Crested Cockatoos
4 Comments »30th August, 2008; Category: Parrots and Lorikeets
Sulphur Crested Cockatoos
Over the last few weeks on my regular travels to Adelaide to attend university lectures I have observed Sulphur Crested Cockatoos on many occasions. Sometimes they are perched on the over hanging branches of trees lining the freeway. Sometime they seem to be keeping a keen eye on the flow of traffic from the vantage point of the light pole.
Most of the time they are busy feeding on the roadside verges. Their numbers can vary from a half dozen or so through to several hundred. Set against the bright green grass they make quite a sight. From time to time they tolerate several interlopers: a Corella or two or several Galahs.
UPDATE: You can buy a large range of items featuring photos of this species – and many others – on TrevorsPhotos, including mugs, tee-shirts, aprons, coasters and many more items.
Little Corellas at Mannum
Little Corella
A few weeks ago I was a guest speaker at the Mannum Garden Club. After the meeting I went down to the reserve by the river to have lunch. A small flock of about fifty Little Corellas was resting in the trees in the reserve. Several of them posed nicely for me.
Little Corellas can often be found in large flocks numbering in the hundreds. They can pose a threat to crops such as grain crops so they are sometimes not popular with farmers. Little Corellas are largely absent from the wetter eastern and southern coastal areas of Australia except where local feral populations have formed from aviary escapes. In the wild this species prefers the drier inland regions and they can be common to very abundant – even in pest numbers in some areas.
Click on the photo to enlarge the image.
Little Corella
Galahs by the hundreds
My regular readers are probably wondering what has happened to me.
Fear not – I’ve just been incredibly busy writing and completing all of my study assignments due at the end of the semester. At the beginning of the term I had 7 due in 8 weeks. Then I still had 7 due but in 5 weeks and now I have 3 due in 3 weeks, so the task is diminishing – and so is the available time. It left no time for blogging and little for birding.
One significant observation of recent weeks has been of large flocks of Galahs around Murray Bridge. On many occasions I have seen flocks of 300 to 500; such large flocks make a spectacular sight. I must get the camera ready and try to capture a large flock in flight – or on the power lines like I saw this afternoon.
Australia: Land of Parrots
No Comments »4th May, 2008; Category: Aviaries, Bird Behaviour, Birds on Television, Parrots and Lorikeets, Reviews
Just a short while ago I had the delight of watching Australia – Land of Parrots on ABC TV. It was a brilliant programme highlighting the behaviour of many of our wonderful parrots. While it didn’t cover all of the parrots of Australia it gave a good coverage of several species.
Eclectus Parrot (female) Adelaide Zoo
I found the section on the bizarre – and rather unique – breeding habits of the Eclectus Parrots to be quite fascinating. Apparently, the female stays in the nest hollow for many months and the male comes to feed her. Furthermore, the male often mates with several other females in his territory during the breeding season, as does the female. This species is also unusual in that the female is the more colourful of the two.
Eclectus Parrot (male) Adelaide Zoo
The photos shown above were taken of some captive birds in a walk through aviary in the Adelaide Zoo. This species is quite commonly kept in captivity, though very expensive to buy I believe.