#Scaly Breasted Lorikeet

[redrcs]

Pretty pretty

Scaly Breasted Lorikeet in the parking lot, Noosaville

[mk-photographer]

scaly breasted lorikeet

Bexley, NSW 2023

[mister-brightside]

"bird photography is about being at the right place at the right time," I say to myself through gritted teeth as I observe the most beautiful birds I have ever seen in my entire life with no camera on me

[herpsandbirds]

Scaly-breasted Lorikeet (Trichoglossus chlorolepidotus), family Psittaculidae, order Psittaciformes, Port Macquarie, Australia

photograph by Roger Fance

[mutant-distraction]

Kow Hao Rui

Red-collared and Scaly-breasted lorikeets

[ardentguilt]

So nice noticed something very interesting where I live.

There’s a big flock of Rainbow Lorikeets which isn’t out of the ordinary but the interesting thing that catches my eye is that there’s 4 birds in the group that are ALWAYS with this group and they’re NOT Rainbow Lorikeets. They’re Scaly Breasted Lorikeets.

I’ve never seen this before and they’re definitely coexisting without conflict which knowing Rainbow Lorikeets generally psychotic behaviour is unexpected.

The Scaly Breasted Lorikeets are the smaller birds with the yellow scalloped breast markings that lack the blue and large orange color patches of the Rainbow Lorikeets.

When I first saw them from a distance I’d wondered whether they were just juvenile Rainbow Lorikeets but upon getting closer I could confirm they’re not Rainbowswhos juveniles have similar coloring to the adults but a darker colored beak.

I’ve been watching this group for a few months now and not once have I seen any conflict, competition or aggression of any sort between the Rainbows and these 4 Scaly Breasted birds.

[slidesworthseeing]

Found slide: Feeding rainbow and scaly breasted lorikeets, Currumbin Bird Sanctuary, Yugambeh Country, Gold Coast, Queensland, slide developed February 1962 (photographer unknown)

[lordkairos3626]

Lloyd has been diagnosed with Scaly-breasted Lorikeet!

Kai has been diagnosed with basic bitch! Northern Cardinal!

Jay has been diagnosed with Dwarf Jay!

Nya has been diagnosed with Wilson's Phalarope!

Cole has been diagnosed with Thick-billed Raven!

And finally Zane has been diagnosed with Gyrfalcon!

[crepusculum-rattus]

the quickest and messiest of sketches of shard with its parrot (which is specifically a scaly-breasted lorikeet) based off this ask :P

[testormblog]

Money with Wings

One day, I found a live baby parrot on the ground, fallen from its nest.  I thought it could be my pet so carefully carried it home and showed it to my father.  Dad smiled sadly at me.  He liked the little bird too.  He said, ‘Jakob, put it in an old cage in the shed.  However, it probably won’t survive.’  He was right.  I brought a few more young parrots home.  We fed them bread and honey.  Unfortunately, they didn’t survive either.  The next one, I fed grain.  It lived and thrived.

I decided to catch more birds.  What a challenge!  They were smart and escaped me quickly.  I talked to Pop about this and he built me a single door treadle trap.  Inside it, I placed a tub of grain to attract my quarry.  Once the bird was inside, its weight closed the door.  The trap worked well and I caught some birds.  Dad then suggested we construct an aviary.

At that year’s Beenleigh Show, I loitered around the bird exhibits and discovered that people bought birds.  I had a keen eye for money making ventures.  Some rare birds were selling for ten shillings each.  I knew where these nested in the bush and could catch three or four of them a day.  Forty shillings beat the miserly two shillings an hour Mattie Jones paid me.

I expanded the aviary then built another and constructed more traps.  My hobby became a small business.  I held up to one hundred birds in stock.  I began to breed, both from birds I caught and purchased.  I bought a state show champion and bred beautiful opaline budgerigars.  My aviaries housed budgerigars of every colour, a variety of parrots, including some pretty peach face lovebirds, and java finches.  My birds won show prizes every year.  This gained me free advertising and clients.  Everybody wanted a pet bird yet suppliers were few.

Still, my enterprise wasn’t an easy lark.  My aviaries had to be registered with a government department.  I had regulations to learn.  These included which species I could legally trap and breed.  An inspector could arrive anytime unannounced.  Sometimes, a pretty bird flew my way and I had no idea whether I should make it mine.  Nevertheless, my pet shop clients never asked if the birds were trapped or bred.  I looked after my birds well and only kept the healthy ones.  I helped the local farmers in return for bird feed, otherwise difficult and expensive to obtain.  They let me harvest cobs of corn as well as stalks of milo to thrash for seed.  I nicked off from school at lunch to check my traps and transfer any quarry in with my call birds.  With Reggie, I delivered orders as far as Brisbane.  Reggie really liked driving his car if I covered his fuel.  The pet shops always accepted whatever I offered.  After expenses, each delivery earnt me a hundred shillings plus, over five pounds.  Good pocket money!

I quickly learnt which birds attracted what prices.  Generally, their prices reflected their availability for sale, their physical appearance and condition as well as their dietary requirements.  Scaly green parrots were plentiful and difficult to feed.  They fetched a shilling each.  Rainbow lorikeets were rare at that time as well as beautifully coloured.  They were worth twenty scaly greens.  A pair of pale headed rosellas brought four shillings.  Most finches sold at ten shillings per dozen except for a single gouldian.  This small purple and gold breasted, green winged, red faced bird netted twenty shillings.  Nobody wanted pigeons, miners or magpies however.  If a cockatiel flew my way, that was a lucky day.  The same applied to a galah.  Back then, the galahs lived out west and strays were difficult to trap.  Both these species were talking birds.  This made my price negotiable.

The biggest threat to my business were Mother’s two cats, Peter and Jimmy.  She loved them and they her but nobody else.  Dad and I avoided them.  They sank their claws into anything living and efficiently killed whatever wasn’t human, including native fauna.  Mother claimed they were good ratters.  Well, these cats bore a grudge towards me.  When I was little and they much smaller, I decided Peter’s bluey grey colour should be green thus painted him so with housepaint.  These murderers longed to avenge my misdeed and sought to slaughter my beloved birds.  They often prowled around my aviaries hoping for an open door before they buggered off to the chook house.  One day, they took their frustration out on a poor hen.  Dad then exacted his on them!

The illegal export game was a risk too.  I unwittingly became caught in it.  A Mr Bright enquired about birds for sale.  He had seen my aviaries whilst driving by.  I was suspicious of him.  He admired my best birds kept in the large open aviary.  Many of these were my call birds and weren’t for sale.  They called their wild cousins into traps for me.  He offered me prices I couldn’t refuse.  Thus, I sold some.  He ordered others and returned for them.

Mr Bright asked about a specific bird not available in the pet shops.  I knew this bird lived near the creek.  He offered me twenty shillings each, a pound, and placed a £25 order.  Big money!  I found a couple nests then watched the chicks hatch and grow.  I stole them when they had their feathers and were ready to fly.  I caught fish daily to feed them and waited for Mr Bright to return.  He didn’t!  I pondered what to do with these birds; release them or sell them to another client.  I figured they were valuable given Bright’s offer of a man’s weekly wage.

Late on a Saturday afternoon, Reggie drove me to a client’s house.  I regularly delivered birds there, showing up without prior notice, as was the case this time.  Dad came too.  He suspected something wasn’t right.  This client, nicknamed Happy Dog, sold top notch birds at his pet shop in the City.  Dad and I knocked on his front door for some minutes.  We heard grunting noises from inside.  An unhappy Happy appeared in his boxers.  He saw the cage of birds and beckoned us into the light of the enclosed veranda.  On this veranda was a bed on which sat a different type of bird wrapped in a sheet, likely the sort who did tricks.  She was displeased that her transaction was interrupted.  I was naïve to her kind of business and only hoped to offload the birds for my small fortune.

My hope evaporated.  Happy said these birds were illegal to keep.  The woman yelled at both him and I in coarse language.  She demanded I leave with the birds and he come back to bed.  He moved me away from her earshot and asked me the price.  I told him Bright’s offer.  The enormous amount seemed a joke.  He laughed, then replied he’d pay twenty-five shillings tops, a tenth of the price.  I reluctantly handed over the birds and resolved to stick to my usual species.  I continued to supply Happy.  He was a major client.

I saved my profits. My birds laid me quite a nest egg to feather my future.  When my adult life began, my business flew the coup.

[mihaelalimberea]

A scaly-breasted lorikeet (Trichoglossus chlorolepidotus) on Australia Day 🇦🇺. I love parrots, and this one was so much fun to photograph! It didn’t sit still for a moment, jumping nosily around as these parrots do, but it did take a break for a few seconds, and I was ready with the camera!

[parrotparadiseparty]

Scaly-breasted-Lorikeet-1-IMG_2852

[typhlonectes]

Scaly breasted lorikeet, Trichoglossus chlorolepidotus

[fornatureiseverywhere]

scaly breasted lorikeet

[mutant-distraction]

Danny Lloyd

Scaly-breasted lorikeet is licking dew drops off the gum leaves that form after lots of rain. Queensland, Australia

[snowpingmandarin]

Oscar the fledgling Scaly warms himself in the morning sun.