Musk Lorikeets

MUSK LORIKEETS (Glossopsitta concinna)

These noisy little parrots were very busy in a red flowering gum tree yesterday morning. They have been around Kilmore now for several weeks. Wherever trees are flowering, the musk lorikeets are busy.


There were a  dozen or more of them feeding in a small tree which was bursting with flower. The birds  seemed to be a mixture of mature and young, some of the young  sitting passively on branches, calling to be fed.






I am not sure how these nectar feeding birds feed their young. I could not see any actual beak to beak feeding. Perhaps the parent birds teach  the young by example.  I will need to spend more time watching carefully.

Although male and female are very similar the female birds do not have the strong blue cap of the male, their colouring a more subdued turquoise.

 They are all very agile whilst feeding, often hanging upside down with their beaks buried deeply in the flowers of the tree. So engrossed were they in the feast on this tree, I was able to photograph them from a very close distance. Several times, birds would alight within arms length as they moved from bud to bud.