A colourful visitor to our garden
Adelaide Rosella
Last week while we were having breakfast in our sun room, we had a very colourful visitor. This Adelaide Rosella, a sub-species of the more common Crimson Rosella, came to check out our bird bath. Sadly, I had neglected to top it up over the last week or so and we’d had some windy and sunny days and it was dry. The rosella stayed for only a few moments before flying off.
Adelaide Rosellas are common in the Mt Lofty Ranges some 50km to the west, and through the mid-north of South Australia. Here where I live in Murray Bridge 80km west of Adelaide, they are widespread but not common.
The red on the feathers varies from almost a deep crimson, as in the Crimson Rosella, through to a very washed out orange. Further upstream along the River Murray, another sub-species, the Yellow Rosella is quite common.
Further reading:
- Yellow Rosellas
- Road trip to Sydney
- Birdcage Rest Area NSW
- Crimson Rosellas in Murray Bridge
- Adelaide Rosellas in our garden
Adelaide Rosella
Road trip to Sydney
Yellow Rosella, Balranald, NSW
We have just returned from a two week road trip to Sydney. In all we covered 2840 kilometres over five days. The remaining 9 days were spent in Sydney visiting family. We had the privilege of spending most of that time with our 20 month old grandson, so there were limited opportunities for birding.
On the trip over and back I listed the birds seen or heard whenever we stopped for a break: lunch or a cuppa. Because of the vast distances we needed to cover each day, birding time was limited. I’ll be sharing some of these times here on this blog in the coming days, including a few photos taken at the time.
In all I managed to record a total of 81 species, not bad for limited opportunities. One of the highlights was the beautiful Yellow Rosella shown in the photo above. He posed beautifully for me while we were enjoying lunch at Balranald in far western New South Wales on our return journey. You can read more about this species here.