This colourful adolescent is a “rainbow lorikeet”. No prizes for guessing why he and his folks are called by that name. The birds are common in Queensland and a great favourite with tourists.When I had the hostel, I put out birdseed to attract them. A couple of lorikeets arrived on the first day and were joined by others. Our guests were delighted and we gained a reputation as a place where you could be photographed with colourful birds festooned about you.
Unfortunately, our lorikeets had mates and they invited them along. Within days an entire flock arrived. We stopped putting out seed and hoped the birds would go away but they didn’t. They decided that our hostel was a good place to spend the night and took to roosting (if that’s the correct word) in the palm trees around the pool.
Like fruit bats, lorikeets are argumentative and refuse to leave one another alone. They fought for perches and made such a din that it was difficult for anyone to sleep. And there was another problem … what goes in one end of a lorikeet comes out the other.
I agonised over a humane solution and was making little progress when the hostel cat intervened. One morning we found a pile of bright feathers in the reception area. By evening the lorikeets had gone.
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