Hand feeding wild IRNs?

[george]

Hi

New to the forum and have a question.

I use to live in east Australia where you find wildlife sanctuary's that attract wild rainbow and scaly-breasted Lorikeets for visitors to feed, with the help of the sanctuary.

The lori's are of course a bit smaller than ringnecked but was wondering if you setup a similar feeding routine, in a London wildlife park for example, do you think the same would be possible with ringnecked?

Btw the Australian wildlife sanctuary's I'm talking about are not-for-profit. Was thinking this could be a similar way to secure other wildlife parks around London and the south-east on England.

Thanks

George

[george]

Bump.

No one have any opinions about this? Is this a captive IRN only forum?

[McmillanBirds]

Hi George

I wish we could have places like that all over the world. I am from SA so I am not too sure what conditions/climate would be like for ringnecks there. If I got the opportunity to do something like that I would though, it would be a beautiful thing.

Regards
Carmen

[george]

Hi Carmen

Yes, it's amazing. Check it out.

[edit]Cant post the link due to spamming swines, off-site URL's blocked for new members, but just copy & paste this into YouTube:

yN7Qpyz10po

or search for Lorikeets Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary

[McmillanBirds]

oh wow!!!! absolutely stunning!!!! they are greedy little buggers though I find it amazing how trusting the wild birds are, it must have taken much patience to get them to that point.

[ellieelectrons]

My dad likes to remind me of the time we went to the Currumbin Bird Sanctuary when I was in junior high school and I stood there for hours feeding those lorikeets! By the end of the day my new pink outfit that I wore was purple top to bottom with lory poo... and I didn't care one bit! I seem to recall my arms were also quite sore from raising my arms all day so the birds would feed from me! Some things don't change much!

At O'Reilly's, a tourist resort in Queensland, the crimson rosellas and some of the king parrots are tame enough that they will sit on your hand to eat from it too. You can see how tame there are in this youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JSmn5xzOVw

The only negatives I can think about this is:
- are they too reliant on humans for food - is this a good or bad thing?
- because the are so tame, it leaves them open to abuse by some people. For example, I was horrified when I saw a boy rip out the tail of a crimson rosella in front of me.
- when birds (and animals in general) are too tame they can make nuisances of themselves (eg. steal food from your BBQ. I was at a coffee shop in a park once and a kookaburra swooped down and stole food out of her hand as she was trying to put it in her mouth... she got a nasty cut on her hand).

Any way, I guess those are points for you to consider.

On the upside, it raises awareness about the birds and it gives people a lovely experience.

Ellie.

[ellieelectrons]

BTW - I think it would be possible with ringies but I think it would take some time and persistence. The feeding would need to be consistently at the same time each day. You could possibly start with bird feeders?

I suspect it would be a good time to start when the new chicks come out of the nest as the younger birds will be less shy.

Ellie.

[george]

Hi MB and Ellie

Currumbin's amazing alright. Remember similar experiences there myself.

According to the fount of all truth and knowledge on the internet ;) Wikipedia, they've been hand feeding them there since the late 40's.

The owner then, Alex Griffiths, started feeding them to protect his flower business. They feed them twice daily at the same times each day and all year round.

Seems we have a similar problem in the South east of England with the IRN's, in that they're feeding on local vineyards and plantations. One newspaper reports that a vineyard is loosing ten's of thousands of pounds of produce a year.

[ellieelectrons]

The owner then, Alex Griffiths, started feeding them to protect his flower business. They feed them twice daily at the same times each day and all year round.

Seems we have a similar problem in the South east of England with the IRN's, in that they're feeding on local vineyards and plantations. One newspaper reports that a vineyard is loosing ten's of thousands of pounds of produce a year.

That's interesting. I wouldn't have thought feeding them would help that problem. I would have thought it would encourage them to breed more and increase the numbers of birds requiring food?

Ellie.

[george]

Would have thought that was the case but afaik the population in the South east of Queensland didn't increase once Currumbin and other wildlife parks were offering a stable alternative food supply. Currumbin's reporting the population of birds coming to feed is in decline at the moment. Blamed on housing development on the gold coast removing they natural food supply.

I see there is a study going on over here to determine the impact the IRN's are having on native birds. Here's the URL

projectparakeet (dot) co (dot) uk