Paul - I agree. Either the plumage descriptions are wildly astray or there is feeding of juveniles by other first-year birds, query whether the same brood. In the below the 3 left-hand birds are females with developed mandibles and red thighs. The 3 on the left are from a long feeding sequence. The feeding bird seems to be first-year. No red thighs, for one thing.
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul T. [
Sent: Tuesday, 17 January 2012 7:26 PM
To:
Subject: [canberrabirds] Superb Parrots - Immatures feeding each other?
Howdy All,
Firstly, a thank you to those who gave directions for the AIS location of the birds.
I spent an hour there this evening and saw a bunch of youngsters and a few adults, all moving around quite a lot. There were a lot of begging young, even if they weren't managing to attract any attention from anyone on most occasions. They obviously just set up a constant begging in the hope that a parent or an adult passes by that can be
influenced. I also saw a pair of immatures where one was feeding
the other? Is this normal? The feeding individual was on the branch above, and the begging individual was below, with the top one going through the motions as an adult would (although obviously it needed a bit of polishing.... looked a bit more like some sort of fit rather than a head bobbing parent <grin>) and the lower one gave every indication that it was receiving sustenance from the action. It wasn't something I would expect to see, or was it just one of the aforementioned influenced bird that couldn't resist the begging call? Both were definitely not adult colouration.
There were also lots of Eastern Rosellas there, including numerous youngsters, many begging. And HEAPS of Noisy Minors.
I hope the lady I bumped into as I was leaving managed to get some good pictures. As I was leaving there appeared to be many more adults moving into the area. I would have loved to have stayed and watched further, but my wife is ill and I didn't want to be away from home for too much longer. Hopefully they posed nicely for the photographer.
Thanks again for the directions on where to see them. It was a lovely hour spent wandering around looking at and for them.
Cheers.
Paul T.
Higgins, ACT
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