Hello everyone,
Philip Veerman raises a good point about the escapees not having any
"street-sense" so to speak. This could be a major reason. I think that a
tough enough bird like the Peach-faced Lovebird could force itself into
a niche in parts of Australia where grain-growing is the norm. I also
think that flocks of birds would escape at times. A door accidentally
left open, a curious dog forcing its way into an aviary, could easily
result in entire aviaryfuls of birds escaping at once, so finding
partners wouldn't necesssarily be a problem.
However, most aviary birds wouldn't recognise the threat that a
currawong or butcherbird represents making them easy pickings. This
reminds me of a problem that I understand the Peregrine fund in Hawaii
has with their Alala (Hawaiian Crow) releases of captive-bred birds. The
Alala is down to about 20 birds (I'm guessing the figure) most of which
are captive birds. The surviving wild ones are savvy to the danger that
the Hawaiian Hawks represent whereas the captive bred released birds are
"sitting ducks".
Regards,
Michael
--
Michael Todd,
Department of Biological Sciences
University of Newcastle,
Callaghan, N.S.W., 2308, Australia
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