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I'm not too
sure about sharing food for your "babies" (or is that "baby's food") with the
birds. I wonder why you would write "excuse the shots", they are very nice.
For what it is worth, I took several photos of the baby Koel yesterday but as I
don't have a camera with a long lens and even though I got within 2 metres and
the bird is certainly identifiable as to what it is they are terrible photos and
I wouldn't bother posting them.
Beyond that,
the year I did a GBS in Richardson (I think 2002-3), I'm pretty sure I recorded
Rainbow Lorikeets there (but I don't have access to the GBS results). Assessing
the change in status of the Rainbow Lorikeet is not so clear. Years ago I
wrote an article: (1991) ‘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. (Investigates the range increase.)
The
inspiration for that came from Canberra where there appeared in the late 1980s
to be the start of getting many records of these birds and so maybe increase but
any such trend is minute (so far) compared to the explosion of numbers they have
achieved in Melbourne. At the time (and I still do) I visited Melbourne and
noticed how many there were when in my young days the species never occurred
there. Similar story in Perth except there it is known to be established from
captive released birds.
This is what
The GBS Report says:
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.
It
would be very interesting to know what has happened since The GBS Report. So I
checked. Predictably, with access to another 6 years of data, Birds of
Canberra Gardens V2 provided much less information, indeed exactly nil
additional information. There are articles in CBN about the localised group in
Belconnen but that suggests a strong likelihood of captive origin.
Philip
Wonderful surprise this morning I was out feeding my birds,
and a rainbow lorikeet came in and helped him/her self to the apple I had
cut up for my babies had to run for the camera excuse the shots
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