Entry 15
Sunday 22nd May 2022
2:13pm
Yesterday we had to vote, so me and my family went out on a walk to the polling place, and went past the park. There were a lot of different birds that I saw and heard, most of which were parrots, including Kings Parrots, Little Corellas and Rainbow Lorikeets. I will get to the Rainbow Lorikeets later, as I want to talk about something incredible I saw and even took a video of during that walk.
We were walking past one of the sports ovals that’s in town, and there were about 200 Little Corellas feeding on grass seeds on the ground. We then saw a large bird fly over us, which I first mistook for a waterbird such as a Heron (as did my family members), but as it flew closer to the flock of Corellas, it swooped down very quickly, twisting and turning in only the way a bird of prey can. It spooked all of the Corellas into flying into the safety of a nearby tree. After reviewing the footage I recorded, it’s possible there may have been two or even three birds of prey in total. Based on its sheer size (and speed) my mum believes it could’ve been a Wedge Tailed Eagle. This would be incredibly if it ends up being true, as we’ve never seen these types of birds in our town before (or at least not on camera). Wedge Tailed Eagles are the largest birds of prey in Australia, so it’d be really cool to have seen such a large bird in the middle of hunting.
The more common birds of prey that live in our area are Brown Goshawks, but both myself and my mum know it can’t be one of those, as Brown Goshawks are only slightly bigger than a Magpie, and because of their smaller size are able to be chased away by Magpies, Crows and similarly size and brave birds. Almost every bird in the area would flee and hide from a Wedge Tail, though. Whatever bird we did see was incredibly large, so I think it’s safe to say that it was most like a Wedge Tail.
The other thing I want to talk about is the large flock of small parrots I tried to record and identify. My mum has been trying to figure out what these small and fast birds that she’s seen roosting by one of the schools are. She believes they are Swift Parrots, and that the birds we saw on our walk today are the same birds, but based on the bird calls and the bits of colour of could see of the birds with my eyes and what I managed to record (it was an overcast day which was not helpful), it seems like the flock of birds we saw on our walk were Rainbow Lorikeets. She doesn’t think they are, though. I’ll do more research into Swift Parrot bird calls (specifically in large flocks) but I do think they are just regular Rainbow Lorikeets, or at the very least, a slightly different subspecies of the Rainbow Lorikeet.
A Brown Goshawk.
A Wedge-tailed Eagle.