A few days ago we noticed a group of Rainbow Lorikeets in our Liquidambar tree attacking the seed balls and presumably eating the seeds. It’s not a very old tree, probably about seven years, and this is the first time we’ve noticed it gets seed balls. They are similar to those of a Plane tree but about twice the size.
We’d normally associate Lorikeets with feeding on tree and bush flowers like Callistemons and flowering Eucalypts. Field guides say very little about which birds eat which foods so they weren’t too helpful, except for the old Cayley “What bird is that” in which he mentions that they sometimes eat grass seeds as well. We realise that birds take a variety of foods , sometimes in contrast to their names, ie Honeyeaters quite often eat insects as well, but can anyone suggest a good source of information regarding the types of food taken by various bird species? We don’t have Hanzab but imagine it might have some info.
Thanks,
Tony
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Comments
4 responses to “Lorikeet foods”
Yes, thank you Tony. It would seem that given a shortage of flowers/nectar they do diversify quite extensively into almost anything available. A useful report well worth a browse.
Tony
My family used to keep a variety of lorikeets back in the 70’s and 80’s and they were fed the usual seeds – canary, white millet, jap millet, and a “wet mix” of raw sugar, heinz baby cereal and water. This was long before lorikeet mixes were available….
Just to add my $2 worth.
Yours in all things “green”
Regards
John Harris Manager, Environment and Sustainability Donvale Christian College 155 Tindals Rd Donvale 3111 03 9844 2471 Ext 217 0409 090 955 john.harris@donvale.vic.edu.au
President, Field Naturalists Club of Victoria (FNCV) Past President, Victorian Association for Environmental Education (VAEE) Specialist aviculturalists and vets. wm
This paper might be some help – when nectar-bearing plants in Darwin were not producing so much, Rainbow Lorikeets fed from 37 different plant types including seeds, lerp, fruit and pollen. http://www.cdu.edu.au/ser/profiles/documents/2004HasebeFranklinCorella.pdf Cheers,
Tony
Specialist aviculturalists and vets. wm