View from a front porch 4 | amberdextrous's Blog

There is a new visitor to the red-flowering gum that dominates the view from my front porch, and the pair of wattle-birds who’ve grown up there are not impressed, despite the interloper’s colourful plumage.
 
I hear the rainbow lorikeet chuckling quietly to itself among the upper branches, but it is strangely difficult to see. It seems counter-intuitive that a bright green bird with a purple head and bands of red, orange and yellow could be camouflaged, but it is. I see the parrot, finally, dangling upside down as it farms the rain-fringed blossoms of their dewy nectar.
 
As beautiful as they are, I despise rainbow lorikeets, which are not native to this South-West corner of the continent. A small flock, brought from their native Sydney on the Eastern seabord, was irresponsibly released here in Perth some 20 years ago, and they have multiplied and spread, to the point where there are now up to 50 thousand of them.
 
I detest them for their aggressive breeding strategy, and for usurping all the nesting hollows that the truly Western Australian native parrots used to occupy. I haven’t seen the local “28” parrot, or heard its sombre whistle, for some years now.
 
The young wattle-birds make tag-team attacks on the gaudy invader, darting with their pointed beaks, fanning their wings. The rainbow lorikeet tries to ignore them as it feeds, but the wattle-birds persist until the parrot finally succumbs to their hostility, and swoops low across the road to settle in another tree, devoid of blossoms.
 
Something in me, beyond mere parochialism, wants to cheer on the locals.