Sydney Porter—Notes from Australia



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quite unafraid. Why should they be anything else, this is a sanctuary

for Australia’s much persecuted Parrot life. The birds slowly climb

about, pulling the branches towards them with their feet, biting off the

bunches of seeds and holding them in their feet until the spray is

finished ; during the time keeping up a kind of conversation with each

other with a soft “ whit-whit ”.


As I shave in the mornings in the bathroom I watch in the branches

of a rowan tree, which almost reaches into the room through the open

window, family parties of these Parrakeets feeding on the scarlet

berries ; in fact it is the only time shaving becomes a pleasure for it

serves as an excuse to linger long, looking at these beautiful birds. So

long did this operation take that I was always late for meals and it

was a good thing that I was the only male member of the household.


The birds I am watching in the forest are only about three yards

away and I could almost touch them ; they are not alert or watchful

or ready for instant flight as one would expect them to be, but they go

on feeding as though I were not there. The mosquitos and leeches

make sitting still a matter of great fortitude, so it is I and not the birds

that will soon have to take flight.


There are a lot of young ones in the trees around the house and they

are in the undress plumage of mottled green and crimson, and even

though they feed with as much gusto as their parents they are

always keeping up a continual whining to be fed. These young birds

are more or less uniform green on the wings and body, with a patch of

blue on the chin and surrounding the lower mandible ; the forehead,

upper breast, throat, and the part surrounding the blue patch are

crimson. I have seen some very mottled birds, almost red but with

green patches on the wings and breast; I think these must have been

in their second year. Sometimes I have noticed young ones, from the

rear, and I have been struck by the resemblance to a Norfolk Island

Parrakeet, a uniform grass green with a red cap. It is not to be wondered

at that the inhabitants of Norfolk Island where these two Parrakeets

are found, think that they interbreed and that the mottled young

ones are the progeny of these two birds.


Sometimes as I lie in a hammock beneath one of the large trees

I am continually showered with the scarlet skins of the rowan berries



