Amazing Amazons

Check out these feral Red-Crowned Amazons in the verdant back yard of Sharon's suburban California bungalow.

The one musketeer

This Musk Lorikeet (Glossopsitta concinna) out the back of Dinosaur World had just about had it by the time I took his picture last weekend.

After I snapped him, he slipped his noggin under his wing and went to sleep.

I felt a bit sorry for the poor thing, as there was a lot of tourists filing through, and on the south-west coast of Australia he was a long way from his native east and south-east coast.

(No, he wasn't tied to the stick with wire - the stick was tied with wire to a supporting post).

Talking with dinosaurs

How's this for a schnozz?

I dunno what kind of parrot we have on parade here, but I suspect it's not Australian.

Possibly one of those Proboscis Parrots from the wilds of Borneo, though I suspect that's not true either.

Any thoughts, anyone?

Parroticus Eclecticus

Just to prove she harboured no hard feelings against parrotkind, Hazel snapped this pair of Eclectus parrots (Eclectus roratus) not long after she was bitten by Mr Glossy.

Natives of the North Queensland vineforest, the female bird has a lurid red head and (true to her Queensland roots) a maroon fuselage. The male comes in snazzy green.

The two sexes differ so markedly in colour, they were once thought to be separate species - though assumedly not by one another.

Nipping Cousins

After having a go at her foobada, Mr Redtail decided to gnaw on poor Hazel's hand.

Neither myself (holding camera), nor Ben bloody Cousins (pictured) were of much assistance.

Not wild, but wild at heart

This cheeky Glossy Black Cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus lathami - native to Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria) was photographed yesterday at Dinosaur World, near Walpole in southern Western Australia.

Although he was not a dinosaur, he almost became extinct when, having had enough of being handled, he chomped into Hazel's right foobada-doobada with his vice-like beak.

That looks like a flake of Haze's foobada-skin on his ample schnoz:-)

Hekyll or Jekyll?

Perhaps no nation celebrates its parrots in art quite so much as Australia.

Though that's a big "perhaps".

In Perth, for instance, you'll see all manner of cockatoos and cockatiels adorning bus shelters and the sides of butcher shops - even frozen, like this one, in bronze surveying a chess board in Hyde Park.

Blind owl, that was delightful.

And why on earth shouldn't he?

Parrot please

This boggle-eyed black-beaker looks pretty pleased with himself.

Incoming

Quite the wingspan on display, here, though I'm not so sure his fine feathered companions are as impressed with it as I am.

Back in black

I've been away a while with a broken computer. Thankfully the parrots have been piling up.

These black cockies, snapped earlier this year in Perth's King's Park, were overlooking the pale blue expanse of Matilda Bay.