Parrots in Flight. Who’s Fastest?

Okay forgive me if I return to being a 10 year old boy and wanting to know
a question like this one but having spent so much time watching and filming
parrots I can’t help but wonder. Okay here are my impressions. It seems
like Rainbow Lorikeets are crazy fast. But having said that, I watched 2
Princess near Jupiter Well in 2008 that flew about 500m in about 4 seconds
to a nearby She-Oak. Which begs the question also. Are Princess faster
than other parrots? An internet acquaintance swore his free-flying pet
Princess was the fastest parrot in all of Aus. I guess the only way we
might know is if folks on here have noticed parrot species flying parrallel
with their cars and took note of the speed.



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3 comments to Parrots in Flight. Who’s Fastest?

  • donaldgkimball

    Having spent time filming them on Bruny Island I can attest to their flight
    being amazingly rapid. They arent that large overall so I wonder if part
    of it is their small streamlined body shape. I wonder how the Polytelis
    genus would do in a full on race over lets say 10 KM. Those powerful wings
    and long tail as a rudder seem to make them super fast. But then maybe its
    just like a guy rooting for his favorite team and I am mentally cheering
    them on without a good scientific study.

    On Sun, Apr 3, 2016 at 11:38 PM, Martin Butterfield <martinflab@gmail.com>
    wrote:

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  • donaldgkimball

    What an amazing life event Peter! Thanks for sharing! I definitely got
    goose bumps over this one. Would love to have seen this. I wonder if the
    Rainbows out flew the Peregrine. Having spent hours with them I think
    their lighter “footprint” in the skies would make them a bit more
    maneuverable than a peregrine. Peregrines are an amazing flying machine
    but not as finely tuned in flight in my opinion but I am open to being
    corrected on this one.

    On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 2:05 PM, Peter Pfeiffer <
    peter.pfeiffer@flinders.edu.au> wrote:

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  • peter

    Even if one manages to clock some in a car, who’s to say they couldn’t go faster still if they wanted? Perhaps GPS tracking is a better method. You could check what their fastest speed was in a week or a month, on the assumption that they might have been fleeing a raptor in that time.

    Steering with your knees while taking photos out the window? Hmm.

    Peter Shute

    Sent from my iPad