Backyard visitors

Vibrant king parrots and nasty-tasting grasshoppers

There are few birds as striking as the Australian king parrot, and as we live in a district whose Aboriginal name means ‘home of the king parrot’, we feel very attached to our avian residents. Adorned in striking red and green plumage, king parrots spend much of their time in the forest canopy, feeding in the outer foliage, stripping berries, blossom and leaf buds from the branches. In spring, we often see small flocks in our neighbourhood, darting between trees, alighting to feed, or using branches as a stage for their timeless ceremonial courtship dance.

With regal aplomb, the male fluffs up his brilliant head feathers, sleeks down the rest of his plumage, contracts his pupils to blaze the golden iris, flicks his wings and calls out to the female. She responds in a similar fashion and then begins bobbing her head until her suitor feeds her. This sequence of movements has remained unchanged for countless generations and is programmed into the king parrot’s genome. The visual cues of the courtship dance induce hormonal changes in the female, stimulating her to ovulate and copulate, while the ritual of courtship feeding provides her with extra food before egg-laying, and confidence that her partner will help raise her chicks.

King parrots nest in tree hollows, seeking old eucalypt trees with holes deep enough to provide a nest chamber well below the entrance. Logging of old-growth forests and land clearing have impacted heavily on their nesting sites, and tree hollows are in short supply, so it is vital that we preserve old remnant trees in urban areas.

We can all help these beautiful birds by investing in suitable deep nest boxes and attaching them high up on trees in parks and gardens around our suburbs. Fortunately, king parrot numbers appear to be increasing in urban areas where they are able to find food on fruiting trees and at garden bird-feeders.

Len gardens in the Northern Rivers, New South Wales