This Easter I give thanks for parrots. Oh parrot-God, thankyou for furnishing Australia with an excess of loud, colourful, cheeky, playful birds. Life is beautiful, life is never boring, when we have parrots in our backyards.
I remember re-reading Raoul Slater’s fabulous book Growing up with Australian Birds for the umpteenth time when I was a kid, and in it he talked about the Galah (I think it was a Galah, but it could have been a lorikeet or rosella). Imagine, he said, that the humble Galah was actually one of the world’s rarest birds. People would go crazy over how beautiful it was; about how delicate the pastel pink was, how perfectly contrasted with the grey.
One of my earliest bird photos - taken on negative film in 2005 (roughly - no metadata back in those days!). Still one of my favourite Galah photos.
Its a thought which has stayed with me.
Imagine if the Eastern Rosella or Rainbow Lorikeet or Major Mitchells Cockatoo was the rarest bird? The Australian King Parrot or the Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo or the Crimson Rosella. Or my personal favourite, the Gang-gang Cockatoo.
Imagine if they went extinct?
And so, how lucky are we to have rosellas, lorikeets, galahs, black-cockatoos and gang gangs as some of our commonest and most visible birds here in Australia. We are truly blessed by the parrot-God (a.k.a. evolutionary and stochastic processes).
Then there are the parrots that you don’t need to imagine. The actually rare ones. Imagine seeing a Scarlet-chested Parrot? A Princess Parrot? The already extinct Paradise Parrot, or the nearly extinct Orange-bellied Parrot?
The nearly extinct Orange-bellied Parrot at its breeding grounds in southern Tasmania. With about two dozen wild birds remaining, the outlook is pretty grim for the OBP. The last bird to go extinct in Australia was another small parrot - the Paradise Parrot of se QLD.
Probably my most surreal parrot moment came in September 2011 when I was in the mallee of South Australia volunteering with a PhD student who was catching dragons. We had heard on the grapevine that Scarlet-chested Parrots were in the area that year. These are nomadic parrots which roam the Great Victoria Desert and occasionally turn up in the mallee of south-east South Australia. I managed to convince Dan, the PhD student, to let me take a few hours off to try and find the parrots. I’m not sure why he agreed - perhaps because he was a birder too and knew how hard these parrots are to see.
So one morning he dropped me off along a track they had been seen on and I wandered off into the bush. I searched and searched and searched and eventually found a beautiful male who allowed me to sit with him as he ate chenopod. I remember shaking my head at how ridiculous the colours were. The purple-blue face was such a rich deep colour, the chest was scarlet with saturation set to +100, the yellow and green and turquoise so vivid that it was like an assault on my eyes. It was completely over the top. What a crazy bird.
Scarlet-chested Parrot at Gluepot (SA) in September 2011.
The parrot characters...
(I think I got a bit carried away describing parrots in this section. I’ll put it down to isolation boredom).
The iconic Rainbow Lorikeet - iconic, effervescent, a bit obnoxious, passionate. A noisy love-maker.
The Sulphur-crested Cockatoo - loud, loud and louder. Opinionated, not afraid to speak its mind, comes across as obnoxious sometimes but actually quite intelligent and probably doesn’t deserve its reputation.
The Major Mitchells Cockatoo, probably should be called the Pink Cockatoo. A bit shy, quite anxious but beautiful on the inside.
The Galah - silly, playful. The original Aussie idiot. Prone to doing odd and seemingly random things.
The Red-capped Parrot - cute, quiet, but confiding if you take the time to get to know them.
The Swift Parrot - good-looking, fit, but doesn’t flaunt it, just does its own thing. Has been a middle-distance runner since primary school.
The Crimson Rosella - gorgeous, with a beautiful voice. Pretty chill but also knows how to have fun.
The Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo - serious, family oriented. Actually a bit silly if you get to know them well enough.
The Long-billed Corella - like other corellas, very playful, loud, likes to party. Can be annoying when they take over an entire town.
The Blue Bonnet - beautiful in an unconvential way. Blends into the background a bit, but actually a very cool parrot.
The Gang-gang Cockatoo, probably my favourite bird. Legitimately the coolest parrot - very kooky, chill, just does its own thing, married to high school sweetheart. Happy to just hang out, not scared of humans.
The Glossy Black-Cockatoo - a personal favourite, a bit unconventional, the university type. Dresses pretty daggy and is always wearing odd socks.
The Mulga Parrot - quiet, often wears clothes with lots of patches.
The Australian King Parrot - majestic, a bit serious, always wearing long skirts.
The Eastern Rosella - pretty, gentle, smart but empathetic.
The Australian Ringneck - like its cousin the Crimson Rosella but without the same striking beauty. Gentle.
The Turquoise Parrot - beautiful but shy, doesn’t like to be approached by strangers.
Do your eyes hurt after reading this post? Mine do…