Spent a delightful half-hour this morning watching two Swift Parrots quietly eating lerps in the upper canopy of a large yellow box tree up the gully above the Hackett water tanks. Was first alerted to swifties being nearby by their calls,
which to my ear are the sound of a small squeaky pair of scissors being rapidly opened and closed. They weren’t hassled by any other species while they were there, although all the normal suspects (rosellas, currawongs, noisy miners) were around. I left before
the swifties did, so had no chance to witness the upper extremes of flight speed.
Steve
