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T H E PR E M I E R PE T & AV I A RY B I R D M AG A Z I N E

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T H E P R E M I E R P E T & AV I A RY B I R D M AG A Z I N E VO L 29 I S S U E 6 • D EC-JA N 2017

Red-bellied Parrot Red-billed Firefinch

ECLECTUS

N A N DAY CO N U R E PA R R OT P S YC H O LO GY


regulars

348 BREEDING AUSTRALIAN PARROTS: Australian Eclectus By Barry Blanch 352 FINCH FOCUS:

Bird Breeder Heaven in Brazil By Russell Kingston

CONTENTS Volume 29 Issue 6

T H E P R E M I E R P E T & AV I A RY B I R D M AG A Z I N E VO L 29 I S S U E 6 • D EC-JA N 2017

Red-bellied Parrot Red-billed Firefinch ECLECTUS

N A N DAY CO N U R E

COVER: RED-FRONTED MACAW BY PETER ODEKERKEN

PA R R OT P S YC H O LO GY

360 HOOKBILL HOBBYIST: Preserving Species Identity in Aviary Subjects By EB Cravens 364 PET PARROT BEHAVIOUR: Companion Parrot Myth Busters— Part 2: Parrot Psychology By Hillary Hankey 368 FINCH FUNDAMENTALS: The African Red-billed Firefinch By Marcus Pollard

372 THE WISE OWL: Think Like a Rat By Dr Milton Lewis 382 ABOUT BIRDS: Hybridisation—Part 2 By Kit Prendergast 389 AVIAN HEALTH WITH

DR BOB: Worming Your Birds By Dr Bob Doneley

394 CONSERVATION: • LPF: Cape Parrots and Honey Bees By Dr David Waugh • WPT: Ban on Trade of Wild African Greys By Carolyn Pradun 397 WILD CORNER: Woody, the Laughing Kookaburra By Dr Claude Lacasse 398 LAST CHIRP

• Saving the Western Ground Parrot By The Friends of the Western Ground Parrot • Annual Zebra Finch Team Show By Ken Glasson

399 LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Status of the Umbrella Cockatoo From Rosemary Low

345

348

features

345 NANDAY CONURES

By Dr Slobodan Ivić This beautiful and intelligent bird has a piercing screech but it has a pleasant nature and breeds well.

356 OPALINE SELECTION AND EVOLUTION

IN THE TURQUOISINE PARROT By David Monroger David shares his journey in development with the Opaline mutation of the Turquoisine Parrot.

362 RED-BELLIED PARROTS

By Jason Wright Jason recommends these quiet, social and endearing birds as suitable for suburbia.

374 THE RED-FRONTED MACAW By Andrew Rankmore Low numbers and difficulty in breeding make the Red-fronted Macaw a beautiful rarity in Australian aviculture. 378 PERUVIAN CLAY LICKS—A RAINBOW OF COLOUR

By Rosemary Low Like a magnet to parrots, clay licks provide a unique chance for birders to see many Peruvian species as they gather in their hundreds on river banks to feast.

386 KILLING BIRDS WITH KINDNESS By Paul Granston Feeding wild birds in your garden can be a wonderful experience for both human and birds—if you approach it correctly. 392 FINCHES 2017 SPEAKER PROFILES

By The Queensland Finch Society Inc Look who's talking at the sixth international finch convention, Finches 17, in Brisbane.

401 classifieds 343


WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY DR SLOBODAN IVIĆ

T

he Nanday Conure Aratinga nenday is a medium-sized parrot. At first sight, there appears to be a great deal of similarity with the huge number of parrots from the Aratinga genus, due to its specific calls and fan-shaped tail, ending in two sharp feathers. The colour and extended maxilla distinguish this species from other Aratinga. They are also called Black-headed or Black-masked Conures due to the black feathers on their head. HABITAT The Nanday Conure’s most common habitats are moist areas below 800m altitude. Nanday Conures live in forests and their range includes south-western Brazil, south-eastern Bolivia, southern Paraguay and northern Argentina. DESCRIPTION Nanday Conures weigh 120–145g and measure 30–33cm in length. Their basic colour is olive green, with a yellowish abdomen. The feathers on the forehead, crown, nape, cheeks and the upper part of the throat are black, as is their 2.4cm bill. The throat and upper breast are washed with blue. The upper part of the neck, part of the back and rump are yellowish-green. The feathers around the thighs, flanks, tibia and cloaca are orange-red. The legs are flesh-coloured and the claws are black. The average length of the male’s tail is 15cm and the female’s 16cm. Colour intensity is somewhat weaker in females, and there is a barely perceivable difference on the neck. Both sexes have bare white rings around their eyes. The iris is dark brown. The feathers of young birds are lighter in colour and the tail shorter than in the adults. The blue colour on the front of the neck and breasts is smaller. However, it is the fact that their legs are black which really distinguishes immature birds. They will begin to change to flesh-colour at two years. Young birds should be ringed with 6mm leg bands. Nanday Conures reach sexual maturity at the age of three and can live up to 30 years.

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PET PARROT BEHAVIOUR WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY HILLARY HANKEY

Companion Parrot Myth Busters Part 2—Parrot Psychology In Part 1 of our three-part myth-busting series, we looked at common behaviour myths new parrot owners face and alternative strategies to set them on the right track to a positive, trusting relationship with their bird. In Part 2 we will look at some general rules of parrot keeping that influence our interactions.

W

hen charting the unknown territory that is the parrot’s brain—how and what they think—it’s easy to fall into the trap of comparing the behaviour we see in front of us to something we are familiar with— human psychology. Indeed, much of the way we work with our companion parrots revolves around the idea that our pets are surrogate children. We treat them as if they feel jealousy, a ess, desire to be the boss, stubbornness, retaliation, contempt, familiall and he problem romantic love and so on. The perience is that while they may experience emotions, like humans, birds express ne another them differently from one ult to decipher and it can be very difficult what another human, much less a parrot, is really thinking. ying therapist With that in mind, playing us to our pets can be a dubious clusions endeavour. Jumping to conclusions about the inner thoughts and emotions of our parrots can not only lead us down a path of non-solution but it can cause true and lasting damage to our relationship. We might attempt to dominate our parrots, chip away at their stubbornness, or feel wronged by their jealousy and lose our way in a never-ending battle of willpower and an attempt to out-wit, out-smart or out-boss them. But there are sustainable alternatives to the myths that are most likely to stand in the way of a healthy relationship with our pets.

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Whether or not we experience nipping and biting is not necessarily a function of our parrot’s developmental process or evolutionary history, but the learning history that we have helped to establish

IS THAT A PHASE? When we are looking fo for the hows and whys of our parrot behaviour beha dilemmas, we often point to biolo biology as the root cause rather than a solution solution. Think about it—if the behaviour change w we see in our birds is an inevitable progression progre in a parrot’s biological makeup, then the there is nothing we have done or can do to change the behaviour we are experiencing. It’s part of keeping birds in our homes—love it or leave it. One of the ways this paradigm reveals itself in our relationship to our parrots is the way we refer to our behaviour challenges as ‘phases’. This implies a behaviour pattern without cause, something to be endured and perhaps, at best, minimised. A phase implies a one-dimensional expression of behaviour, certainly not one that looks to the ongoing environment for a feedback loop. One of the more common illustrations

of this is the term ‘the honeymoon phase’, describing the period shortly after one brings home a new bird and everything about the relationship is rosy. The bird steps up whenever we want it to, rarely (if ever) bites or screams and adorably follows us around the house. Essentially, it embodies the characteristics of all the things that we could ever ask for in a dream bird. If the new bird is a young one, you may also experience what is commonly referred to as the ‘terrible twos’ and/ or the ‘nippy phase’. It is as though each parrot is biologically destined to progress through these phases just as we routinely discuss in our childrens’ and adolescents’ development. This is certainly not to deny that animals undergo changes in behaviour as they mature, but a closer look at our own influences would go a long way towards a solution rather than jumping to hasty conclusions and blaming biology.


FINCH FUNDAMENTALS WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARCUS POLLARD BSc (Hons)

The African Red-billed Firefinch

A

fter a few columns which have concentrated on top-end exotics and harder-to-find finches, I thought it was time for a change of pace and a look at a perennial favourite—the African Firefinch, or Ruddy if you hail from New South Wales. There are about 12 species recognised in the Firefinch family, but unfortunately there is only one available in Australia and that is the Red-Billed or Senegal Firefinch Lagonosticta senegala. (Mind you, Wildlife Tasmania obviously believes there is a second species as it banned the Blue-billed Firefinch L. rubricata in 2007. Alas, that species has been absent from Australian aviaries since long before I ever kept my first Zebra Finches—which was a wee while ago! However, the Blue-billed Firefinch does reside on the list of birds legally known to be in Australia, so ‘never say never’, I guess.) Every now and again you will get a female that shows large expanses of red across her breast as she colours up and this may be a throwback to L. rubricata blood. I am aware that older females often show increases in red colouration but few show it in juvenile plumage—I’ve only seen it three times in my birds, so this is as good a theory as any, I reckon. As an aside, I recently asked members of the Waxbill Finch Society Community UK Facebook group about the firefinch species available over there. The list was very impressive indeed, with the Bar-breasted L. rufopicta, the Black-bellied L. rara, the Vinaceous L. vinacea, Jameson’s L. rhodopareia, Blue-billed L. rubricata and even a mention of the Mali L. virata and the Nyasa, L. rubricata haematocephala. It’s remarkable that they have been able to keep this range going even with limited stocks of wild blood. DESCRIPTION Sexing is a dawdle in Australia’s African Firefinch, as male Red-bills have a rich red plumage, prominent yellow circle around the eye and a light suffusion of white spots on either side of the breast. The female is

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African Firefinch pair

African Firefinch males


374

P ODEKERKEN

WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW RANKMORE


WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROSEMARY LOW

It was fascinating to watch the behaviour of individual Green-winged Macaws

A

ustralia’s large areas of fairly open habitat make it one of the best countries in which to observe parrots. In South America the situation is different. Many parrots occur in heavily forested areas and spend much of their time high in the canopy. A few species can be found in city squares or flower-filled gardens but they are the exception and often they are feral populations. Prolonged observation is usually difficult, if not impossible. The notable exception to this is at clay licks, where hundreds of parrots gather on river banks to feast on clay. Most of these sites—numbering more than 70—are in south-eastern Peru, with a few in Ecuador, Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil. It was during the 1970s that the first photographs and film footage of parrots at clay licks (Tambopata and Manu) reached the outside world. They caused a sensation! The images of Scarlet, Green-winged and Blue and Gold Macaws massed on a river

378

bank, in their glorious bright colours, stayed in the mind forever. I first went to Peru in 2003 and have unforgettable memories of a colpa, as clay licks are called, on the Peru/Bolivia border at Heath River and I had long wanted to return. RETURN TO THE CLAY LICKS Thus it was that on 18 August, after three flights, I met up with three female friends at the airport at Puerto Maldonado, the gateway to the Peruvian Amazon region. We had already been travelling for 29 hours—but we were not there yet! A motorised canoe awaited us for the four-hour trip. We arrived at the Heath River Wildlife Centre at 6pm, just as dusk was falling. The nearby colpa is advertised as ‘the world’s only large macaw clay lick reachable in half a day from a jetport, with daily connections to the outside world’. Most colpas attract 5–6 or more parrot species, from large macaws to small conures. At first light (if it is not raining or windy), parrots arrive from every direction

to certain rare areas of river bank. They are there to eat the clay which either helps to detoxify the poisons found in certain seeds or nuts, and/or provides the minerals, such as sodium, missing from their food. Every day we were ready to board the canoe in the dark at 5am. On the first morning, just 10 minutes after setting off, the canoe hit a sandbank and we nearly capsized—a scenario only avoided by those on the left side of the canoe rushing to the right. In these journeys there is always a boatman at the front with an enormously long pole. His job is to push the canoe off sandbanks and to test the depth of the water—it was the season when it was at its lowest. Our two boatmen and our bird guide César struggle on the sandbank with pole and arms, heaving against the strong current which has pushed us there. Eventually, the boat is free but one boatman is left stranded on the sandbank! He manages to wade and jump onto another sandbank and when our boat


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