Rainbow Lorikeets over Scullin

["Philip Veerman" <>]

Indeed so and it is a little surprising that this one appears to have gone under the radar for Chris. I referred to the increase in Rainbow Lorikeet's abundance in Canberra in my 1991 article: ?The changing status of the Rainbow Lorikeet Trichoglossus haematodus in South-east Australia: the role of wild and escaped birds?, Australian Bird Watcher 14: 3?9. That article has its origin as far back as 1988 and was one of the incentives behind the project to properly compile all the backlog of GBS data. Although the article is mainly about Melbourne, it also includes data from Canberra. The birds are now widespread and abundant in Melbourne, although did not occur there at all in the 1970s, strangely it took someone in Canberra to publish the obvious that had not been mentioned before. Also Adam Leavesley wrote more about this group in Belconnen, 2003, see CBN 28 (2):53-55.  During the late 1980s they were regularly seen from my place in Kambah but not since then. I also mentioned on this line, a pair in Queanbeyan a few weeks ago.

It is of course, worth repeating the text from the GBS Report on the species, which includes:

"The pattern shown by this conspicuous and easily identified species is not at all clear. This goes against the preliminary results of Veerman (1991a). The trend described therein for Melbourne has held up but the increase described for Canberra has not continued. There is a February to April peak in numbers but when combined with staying fairly similar from July till January, that does not suggest a natural seasonal pattern at this stage. The monthly pattern is far from consistent. In some years the birds may be passage migrants, nomads or randomly occurring from escaped or released birds. Group size is small, up to ten birds noted. The numbers rose dramatically from Years 5 to 8 but then declined. Most records are from the Belconnen area, the north-west suburbs of Canberra."

Philip