WHERE'S ROGER?
A CROWN OF LORIKEETS
I live very near to the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary and I go past it at least a couple of times a month. Like most people I don’t take all that much notice of what goes on in my own backyard. The wildlife sanctuary is pretty much in that category.
I do have second hand memories of the place from about forty five years ago, or the scene in my minds eye is that old. It is actually a photo of my first wife when she was a little one about six years old. I would hazard a guess that there are tens of thousands of old and fading photographs of tens of thousands of people wearing a crown of lorikeets hat.
Now you may ask what the devil is a crown of lorikeets hat, well it is not really a hat but it does concern lorikeets. A Lorikeet is a wonderful, pretty and perpetually hungry bird of the genus Psittacidae, don’t you just love those latin names, all it means is that it is basically a Parrot. When it knows it will be fed, it will crowd around flapping and making a racket and if you happen to be holding the food they will settle or attempt to, on your head and shoulders as if you weren’t there and were simply a food dispenser. Hence the crown of lorikeets hat.
This pesky little fellow along with many of his cousins flock and feed together. If you happen to be a gardener and you are in the feeding path of flocks, I prefer herds, of Lorikeets you could be in trouble. They love to eat and eat and eat. Often if they feel thwarted in their feeding they will actually cause a great deal of destruction to the timber parts of a house. I have seen serious damage done by these smug little chaps.
One person who didn’t wish to pushed around by a herd err I mean flock of these pushy parrots was Mr. Alex Griffiths in 1947 as he opened a sanctuary to protect his own backgarden. This was an admirable idea as it turned out and the little buggers were fed up also as it were, so much so that they left his broccoli and asparagas alone. His neighbours up the road weren’t quite so happy with the result as the voracious creatures soon burn off their fuel and look for more. That may well have resulted in the partial destruction of backyard gardens twenty miles away.
Alex Griffith The early days
These and other birds will flock and go from feeding place to feeding place on a very well defined path. If your backgarden veggies are close to their flightpath then look out. I can get scads of them anytime I want, should I choose to annoy my neighbours if ever I became vindictive. They are sort of a secet weapon.
Back to the crown of Lorikeets hat, the screeching crown of lorikeets hat a little girl wore along with a smile that may well have materialised after a screech of her own so many years ago.
The Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary has been run as a private enterprise operation with varying degree of success but in recent decades became less viable until being rescued and taken over by the National trust of Queensland. The place is very much more slick than before and that is of course reflected in its cost per family structure. It is so much more than it ever was with a huge collection of Australian Wildlife and featured ‘Shows’
It does have some very important social and ecological functions including an animal hospital which even I old eco warrior that I am not, found very useful when a baby magpie became lost last year and swarked and squeaked, he only squeaked because he was very young which was also the reason he was lost. He was lost ( I assume he was a boy magpie simply because he was lost, boys are like that) in fact he was frightened away from below his nest by a big bully bird, genus unknown, and my son found him sqwarking and sqeaking for all he was worth.
Being the incredibly knowledgable person that I aren’t, I didn’t know how to solve the baby’s problem and so we had an eco-encounter with the Currumbin Wildlfie Sanctuary’s Animal hospital where they took in the little fellow and presumably saved his life.
I am sure I occasionally wake to his lyrical call when I am at home and I often wish the little bugger would not thank me so early in the morning. So when you are up this way Currumbin is just north of the NSW Qld border drop in and the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, it is well worth the effort and cost of admission and who knows you might end up in a faded photo wearing a smile and a crown of lorikeets hat.
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