David Berry
🇦🇺 Australia 🦘
- Post score: 12
- #1
Bird-on-a-stick…
Sometimes I'm easily fooled: like yesterday afternoon when a pale blue parrot flitted through my peripheral vision.
Could it be a pale-headed rosella? My sighting had been for only a second—two at most—and rosellas certainly inhabited the sclerophyll scrubland that I was in. Better track it down!
Ten minutes later I found the bird atop the three-metre flower stalk of a grasstree (Xanthorrhoea australis). It certainly wasn't a rosella; nor was it like any of the almost sixty parrot species on this continent.
Merlin Bird ID app drew a blank, as did the two Australian field guides on my iPhone.
That night I showed the photo to our son, Ben. 'Mattie knows all about birds', he assured me. (The caged sort.) A few minutes of text-messaging later I had the answer: Indian Ringneck (Rose-ringed Parakeet).
I had captured an escaped prisoner.
Shoot first, ask questions later.
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Genetically-modified Rose-ringed Parakeet : Psittacula krameri
South East Queensland, Australia
camera—subject 12m // subject—background 15m
South East Queensland, Australia
camera—subject 12m // subject—background 15m
Sometimes I'm easily fooled: like yesterday afternoon when a pale blue parrot flitted through my peripheral vision.
Could it be a pale-headed rosella? My sighting had been for only a second—two at most—and rosellas certainly inhabited the sclerophyll scrubland that I was in. Better track it down!
Ten minutes later I found the bird atop the three-metre flower stalk of a grasstree (Xanthorrhoea australis). It certainly wasn't a rosella; nor was it like any of the almost sixty parrot species on this continent.
Merlin Bird ID app drew a blank, as did the two Australian field guides on my iPhone.
That night I showed the photo to our son, Ben. 'Mattie knows all about birds', he assured me. (The caged sort.) A few minutes of text-messaging later I had the answer: Indian Ringneck (Rose-ringed Parakeet).
I had captured an escaped prisoner.
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