There have been a plethora of lorikeets around here lately. Seth and I saw musk on two occasions last week. This photo was taken when I was asleep.
My parents were staying and mum noticed lorikeets playing in the tree in our front yard. She quickly found Glenn and asked him to get these photos. I didn’t even know they were on here until I looked later.
I’m going to practice taking photos of them while they are in the area. It would be awesome to get clear photos of their tongue.
Purple Crowned
It was 9.30 in the morning. I awoke to a tap on my shoulder and an innocent question: “Was the bird a purple crowned?”
The day before, we had gone exploring looking for purple crowned lorikeets at this little reserve near the Waurn Ponds shopping centre. We could both hear lorikeets but we couldn’t really see anything. They were up really high and the tree cover was so dense. I was just shooting photos of whatever and hoping for the best.
I got home and found this photo. I was fairly certain it was but I had to double check. I did the usual ‘ask smart people on Facebook.’ Seth sat upstairs as I read out the questions I had asked on the Facebook post. He was really getting into the process of identification. He didn’t really want to go to bed until he knew what bird it was, but I reassured him that I would tell him. Hence the early wake up call!
Scaly Breasted
Today, I was sitting on the couch overlooking the garden and talking to Sethy. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a small lorikeet fly past. I instinctively thought it could be a scaly breasted. A couple had been reported near the local shops and I just had that gut feeling. They didn’t look like musk.
We ran outside to look. I was right! There were two scaly breasted in the tree across the road from us. There were other lorikeets in the tree which made it confusing. Seth was so excited, he dragged my parents out to get a look. He kept repeating that, like me, he’d now seen four species of lorikeet. It was really amusing. After seeing the purple crowns, I was going to focus on finding these for the Mr. And I didn’t even have to do anything! Now, to find the little.
The lady who owned the house walked out to have a look. She mentioned how she saw musk in there occasionally. We told her how we saw scaly breasted and Seth showed her the book. I was kinda proud then, he LOVES his nature. Minutes after leaving he phoned up to talk about them. I pointed out the obvious ID’able features. He was also excited to go over a bridge that we had walked under during one of our hikes. Sometimes, suburban birding can be really awesome.
