Eastern rosellas’ colours brighten our lives
A DELIGHTFUL picture in Monday’s Geelong Advertiser showed a family of five eastern rosellas in a nest in a staghorn fern at Ocean Grove.
The fern at Kevin Galvin’s home in Ocean Grove has provided a safe haven for the parrots to raise a family.
There is an interesting earlier example from February 1996 when a staghorn fern at Clifton Springs also became a rosella home.
In each case there must have been a reliable supply of food nearby.
Rosellas usually select a tree hollow in which to raise a brood, but readily improvise if none is available.
Wooden nest-boxes are an excellent alternative, but need to be monitored to remove unwanted tenants including mynas and feral bees.
Hollow fence posts too are readily adopted by the rosellas and others including redrumped and blue-winged parrots.
Rosellas usually have five young – the number in Kevin’s staghorn fern nest – and they remain in the nest for about four weeks.
Eastern rosellas are truly beautiful birds and I can’t help but agree with Charles Belcher who wrote so long ago that “I sometimes wonder whether we should not better appreciate the Rosellas’ rainbow colouring if it were a rarer bird.”
Fortunately, it is not yet a rare bird.
Rosellas feed on a range of grass and other seeds, and frequently do so along roadsides where there is a constant hazard from fastmoving cars.
But they also eat apples and other fruits and can cause some damage in orchards.
Their natural range is in southeastern Australia from the extreme eastern corner of South Australia to the southeast Queensland.
Like so many birds they were introduced to New Zealand early last century.
Wildlife information and questions can be sent to ppescott@gmail.com