While having the joy of watching a male scarlet chested parrot almost at my
feet last week I noted a few things:
First at 46 deg Celcius even a heat tolerant neophema like the SCP can only
handle so much. At the risk of this sounding a bit like a fairy tale I was
literally standing watching honey eaters in an area I had seen the SCP days
before when I caught a flutter of colorful motion. It was a male SCP which
flew in and landed about 5 m from me. Its body feathers were tight against its
body and its wings held way out from its body as well. It seemed to squat for
a bit then skittered toward the direction of the base of a mulga. Amazingly a
2nd male SCP flew in out of nowhere and proceeded to battle with the first
male. They made a variety of high pitched neophema like calls and then after
flying at each other with open beaks and skittering about chasing each other a
victor was declared (I couldnt tell who won to be honest)
The victor then proceeded to a shady spot in the sand and lay there for a
minute. Then it proceeded to scratch and kick sand with its feet with its
breast sitting in the sand. Over the next few hours that I watched, the bird
gradually dug itself a deep enough pit all I could see was its bright blue
head, green back and tail. Its gorgeous scarlet chest and the rest of the body
hidden. It stayed like this for about 3 hours only stopping occasionally to
rotate its body and kick out more sand as if it was regulating the very
temperature of the sand.
When it first began all of this I thought it was dust bathing. As best as I
can determine it was acting like an overheated canine on a hot day and trying
to dig where it was cool to avoid the heat.
If anyone else has more knowledge about this behavior in neohpemas I would be
delighted to hear.
Thanks!
Don Kimball
==============================www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
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