Lorikeet foods – includes meat

It should have been published as a database that could be updated – but its on paper and not updated:

Barker, R.D. and Vestjens, W.J.M. The food of Australian birds (2 vols) CSIRO 1990. I guess the info has gone into HANZAB (which should be an updatable on-line resource).

From memory you can look up a bird in the books and see what it was known to eat, or look at a plant and see what birds feed on it (or perhaps I just did that for myself).

In Melbourne Rainbow Lorikeets are now in plague proportions in Melbourne largely due to the 1970s fad for planting Australian native – rather than indigenous – trees. Feeding them with sugar solution etc. doesn’t help to keep down their numbers!

I have several times seen them feeding on minced meat, stuck in lumps on branches in a park by some kind person for the butcherbirds.

Michael Norris