birding-aus

King parrots

To:
Subject: King parrots
From: Peter Adderley <>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:27:31 +1100
Can someone tell me how long King parrots live, and how long they continue to breed? The reason I ask is that I suspect a local male visitor is the same bird that used to visit me over ten years ago. During years between 1998 and ~2003 I'm fairly certain that this same bird that sired at least three families and I felt that I was feeding its offspring and even grandkids for several years afterwards. But the chain seemed to have been broken as I suspect a raptor moved in because all the birds seemed to disappear almost overnight. After that for the last four or five years we have had the occasional visit but the birds were always flighty (sorry, awful pun) and would never come close.

Our present visitor acts as though he knows us (both my wife and I) and cottoned on to how I protect him from the aggressive Rainbows extremely quickly. In 1998 I spent considerable time (in almost constant disbelief) that the King knew how I was choofing of the Rainbows and would return to feed as soon as the Rainbows were held at bay. He would often flutter around behind me as I dispensed with the Rainbows. (BTW the Rainbows never imagined I would hurt them and we still remain on good terms) Because of this rather instant familiarity I can only think that it's the same bird. When he turned up a few weeks ago he came with another much younger male. At the time it raised questions in my mind to whether birds could be both gay in nature and gay in plumage (who's a pretty boy?) (apologies again). However I suspect the younger male was something like an adolescent that never left home.
His father finally choofed him off and hasn't been seen recently.

Whilst I'm here, and I know this is not a politically correct thing to ask, may I ask what is the best seed to feed the Kings? I have tried "wild bird" mix and they only ever take the (grey) sunflower seed and leave the rest. I feel that with my past experience in helping several King families breed, and they only demand food when the kids have hatched, that I can only be doing good if only to avoid them from eating damn bread and sugar that other people do, just to see the pretty birds.

I also have to say that when buying some seed yesterday it was so tragically depressing to see so many caged parrots, sitting, confused, bemused, knowing damn well that they were trapped or that there was something wrong or simply being bored sh__less by their predicament.
Is there a means to change this cruel paradigm?
I love to relate with the wild birds for who they are, how they relate to eachother and to me in the real world, and not what they look like in a bloody cage.

Cheers,
Peter (aka "ptera")



===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com

To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to: 
===============================

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU