h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Wow to have all those exotic birds locally. Very neat. Dmitri and I went to a zoo that had an enclosed aviary and visitors could buy little cups of nectar to feed the lorikeets. I am suprised that they even ate seeds --I think they informed us they were like hummingbirds and existed on nectar. Hmmf. Maybe they are relatives of the native ones. They are certainly noisy enough and scrappy that I can imagine them intimidating larger birds.

Thanks so much for sharing this.

They are noisy and they both sip nectar+eat seeds+caterpillar poo....

Here you can occasionally find drunk Lorikeets reeling in the undergrowth or loopily flying from branch to trunk to branch and missing their landings, the reason you might ask? A combination of things; Hot sun, heavily flowering trees loaded with nectar that then ferments over a few days and they of course lap it up and get inebriated.

I have a mass of King Parrots outside my library window as I type this and they are swaggering about underneath palm trees gorging on fallen native plums and palm fruits. One thing I didn't give Dmitri was a link to a photo of these.

http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Alisterus-scapularis

You might like to have a look at the colour of these birds

Wow, really beautiful. They make the prettiest coloured birds here look like plain janes. I think they are pretty to watch but i wouldn't want to try and keep one as a pet. You'd have to take the place of an entire flock and that is a pretty tall order for a .

I envy you - I used to live in Sydney and miss the bird life especially the lorikeets and galahs.
It is worth noting the picture at the bottom of the entry is of European goldfinches a common bird on UK feeders - so it is not all little brown jobs here.

Yes we are lucky with the birds we have in our urban areas and places like where I live in an urban environment that borders forest+field where I have the best of both worlds really.

Take last night for instance: Bedtime about 10pm, time to read some more Pope, hmm ah yes Pope and Dr Arbuthnot, they would put their heads togethe...what is that noise? bloody dogs...no, wait a minute that's a Barking Owl...and there goes another one, well well. Now I have my ears straining for sounds through the upstairs bedroom windows...a soft hissing noise like a child's intaken breath through clenched teeth, I know that sound it's a young Tawny Frogmouth Owl issuing a call to another.
Back to Pope+sleep and at 3am awoken by loud raucous screeching (thanks for that)from our annual visitor from Papua New Guinea the giant Channel Billed Cuckoo I wish he'd go back to PNG. 3.45am and the local troupe of Kookaburras reckon they've had enough of night time and it's time to wake everything up with their laughing...it's like jungle drums as other packs of these iconic birds let loose the morning laughter one after the other across the valleys.

Maybe that's it and a few precious hours of sleep can be reclaimed before sunrise but alas it's not to be for at sometime during the night a bull Koala has entered my yard and climbed one of the large gumtrees down the back boundary and he's as randy as hell and not shy on yelling it out to the world or I should say grunting it out in a voice that immediately reminds you of why there is a word in the OED called 'stentorian'.

Peace of the countryside? It's a myth believe you me

I used to have a girl friemd who had a colomial bungaloo on the edge of the Blue Mountains - the sounds were lovely Boobook Owls and Tawny Frogmouths and night, waking up to Currawongs, Magpies and Butcherbirds, the sound of gentle breathing and the smell of orange blossom, jasmine and musk.....oh dear think I need a cold shower

Gracious, I'll take my plain-jane birdies and innocuous squirrels any day rather than the more interesting fauna of Oz. That noise would be horrible to put up with. Is the mental health of Oz up to treating all those sleep deprived citizens there?

Drs Forsters, Castlemaine and Bunderberg OP are all experts in inducing deep sleep