Swift parrot observation

Link to observation.

Bear with me.

I was coming out of the outdoor dunny around 1pm when I saw two small parrots flying fast and fairly low, across a small paddock toward the adjacent bushland. They were primarily green, with distinctive red patches under their wings, in the armpit (wingpit?) area. They didn’t make a call, or if they did it wasn’t one I recognised — it was only a second and I took a moment to get my brain in gear.

My first thought was musk lorikeet, which I’ve seen nearby recently, but I went to look it up. Of course my field guide has gone walkabout so it was iNaturalist and Google to the rescue. Musk lorikeet wasn’t right — no red patches under the wings. Nor were they juvenile crimson rosellas (common here) because the behaviour was wrong (flight pattern, and two of them without adults) and anyway two random juveniles wouldn’t have matching, distinctive red patches like that. My other thought was rainbow lorikeets (not super common here but I’ve seen them nearby) but they have a wider stretch of red under the whole wing, not just in the armpit.

So I googled “rosella or lorikeet with red under wing” and some other variations of those terms and got a few suggestions for the swift parrot. Most importantly the Tasmanian threatened species website said the red under-wing patches were the main way to distinguish them from the musk lorikeet.

Swift parrots are critically endangered, and there are no sightings in iNaturalist very close to here. However there was a research-grade sighting about 30km away at Mount Wallace, the other side of Lal Lal, in 2020, and plenty of others around Melbourne and central Victoria. However the only January sightings have been in Tasmania, where supposedly they go to breed at this time of year, living on Eucalyptus globulus and E. ovata according to Wikipedia. For whatever it’s worth, there’s no research grade sightings of either of those nearby, though they do grow in the region generally and I suspect it might just be that nobody near me is a big Eucalypt ID nerd.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve got. I’m new to this, but I’m confident of the features and behaviour I saw. Thoughts?

Publicado el 23 de enero de 2022 por alexbayleaf