Agile, Active, Noisy Nomads… Musk Lorikeets

By Keith Hutton on June 18, 2014 in Other

When I was in Centennial Park one afternoon in mid-March I came across about a dozen Musk Lorikeets, in among the trees that follow the fenced drain that runs along the boundary of Mission Fields. Some were feeding high up in flowering paperbarks, accompanied by a couple of Eastern Spinebills and a small party of Yellow Thornbills, while others were loafing in the pines.

Musk Lorikeets are uncommon in the Eastern Suburbs, hard to get a good look at high up in the trees they prefer, but easy to locate by their frequent, high-pitched flight calls and continuous chattering when feeding. Nomadic and mostly uncommon in the Sydney region, there were more around last summer than usual.

Adult Musk Lorikeets are medium size, sturdy green birds with scarlet foreheads and bill tips. They have scarlet patches below their eyes too, and their upper breasts are edged yellow. Sexes are similar with no seasonal variations and young birds are not as brightly coloured. They are active, noisy and conspicuous when feeding and when flying high, fast and direct with rapid shallow wing-beats between flowering trees.

Musk Lorikeets are endemic to southeast Australia, north to extreme southeast Queensland and west to the Eyre Peninsular in South Australia. They are widespread in eastern Tasmania, eastern NSW and all regions of Victoria. Tall, dry open forest and woodlands – often dominated by tall eucalypts – and suburban areas, particularly flowering street trees, open parkland and gardens with scattered trees, are all acceptable habitats.

Nectar and pollen from flowering native trees, and seeds, fruits, insects and their larvae are all on the menu for Musk Lorikeets, which feed greedily at all levels in the canopy, often with other nectar feeders among outer branches, mostly early in the morning but commonly all day. They are often seen in pairs and small groups, though they sometimes number in their hundreds, in mixed flocks with other lorikeets and Swift Parrots. They are typical lorikeets – arboreal, agile and acrobatic, foraging with much chattering and excitement, and scrambling among the flowers. They appear oblivious to danger when feeding, and their frantic behaviour and consequent continuous movement of leaves and sprays of blossoms make them obvious to potential predators.

Musk Lorikeets move around unpredictably in response to the availability of flowering and fruiting trees. They can sometimes be serious pests in orchards, where they have been legally shot and poisoned in the past when feeding on ripe fruit. In one well-documented case birds visited a pear orchard every day for three weeks until the crop was eliminated. Large flocks have been reported feeding on ripening cereal crops too.

In the north of their range and around Sydney they declined following European settlement, but over the last forty years or so numbers have increased significantly without any apparent changes in regional distribution. This is despite the fact that there remain local areas of concern for a small number of orchardists and farmers.