As I live in rural Australia, my home is a veritable aviary of all sorts of birdlife…from the ubiquitous sparrow through to the ear-drum rupturing sulpher-crested cockatoo. If the EPA were to hang out here in the early morn, I’m sure they’d whack a ban on the area for noise polluting activities.
Now yesterday there were three smaller parrots scurrying around in the grass in the backyard…very well camouflaged, from what I could see they were pale green, about maybe 7 or 8" long and busy eating seeds from all the weeds that are flowering at the moment. I’ve always referred to them as ‘grass parrots’, not knowing the proper ornithological name.
The birds were then disturbed and flew onto a fence, where I saw the parrots had a distinct orange blaze on their bellies. :eek:
Mad googling ensued to find a bird similar to the Orange Bellied Parrot but none jumped out at me as possible candidates.
The OBParrot is critically endangered in Australia, and they are not known to live around here at all: I truly doubt a colony has managed to avoid detection, so I need someone with a bit of bird nous and/or better google-fu than me to give me an ID for my avian freeloaders.
How about one of these, the Australian King Parrot?
Further description - size, etc, - would be helpful. It is also possible they are escaped pets, although with three of the same it’s less likely than if it was just one.
You are a bit spoiled for choice, since you are right on the edge of the ranges of several parrots that fit the description and the fact that you haven’t seen them before suggests that they are vagrants.
I have seen them before, they’re frequent visitors especially at this time of year, but normally they scoot off quite quickly when disturbed: this time they sat on the fence showing off their orange bellies which I hadn’t previously seen.
The blue bonnet might be a candidate…I’ll get back to you when I see them again, this time with a pair of binoculars in my hand.
