Laurie and Keats

Laurie and Keats

Picked

• 3 eggplants
• 5 spring onions
• Half a punnet of tomatoes

‘Laurie’ and ‘Keats’ are our names for the pairs of rainbow lorikeets that visit our yard. We think there are at least two different pairs that turn up - a noisy pair that ‘talk’ a lot to each other while eating  and a quiet pair that you hardly notice except when they spook.  And then there is ‘Solo’ a lone bird who sometimes visits.

One of the pairs - I think the noisy pair - has recently turned up with a youngster, who we unimaginatively call ‘Baby’. Baby doesn’t really seem much smaller than his (lets imagine he is a lad) parents – you cant notice a big difference in his feather colouring either but his beak is a little browner.  It's how baby behaves that sets him apart.

He is clumsy! This includes him mucking about in the small eucalypt hanging upside down, sitting on small branches that bend or don’t take his weight etc. Then there is his flappy flying and an inability to land on the balcony rail. It takes him several goes. 

He also has a penchant for sitting inside the seed bowl - his parents politely sit on the side of the bowl 'tutting' I expect! Baby also doesn’t really eat seed yet - he just picks the seed or the husks up and fiddles with it while sitting in the bowl. Then there is his pestering for crop feeding.  I guess they are trying hard to wean him thus the visit to our seed?  But he insists in sitting up close to parents and pecking at their beaks for a feed.

I have recently been told that they probably shouldn’t be eating sunflower seeds and if we are going to put food out we should put out food suitable for nectar eaters (a special mix which I will look into) or fruit, which when I put out they never eat!