Long-Billed Corella. The red forehead and red throat bar are how I have identified it and that it's not a Little Corella but I took it last Friday at home and according to my field guide they don't live in SE Queensland?
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yes, Long-billed Corrella from your ID points and the long bill; I belive that 1 Field Guide (maybe Pizzey & Knight) indicates a population in SEQ else it owuld be an aviary escapee - in which case you should not add to your list
Peter
Affirmative
They are native to W Vic but agricultural expansion of grain crops has facilitated LBC range expansion to most of Vic, parts of adjacent SA and NSW, and aviary and pet escapees have established disjointed populations all the way up the east coast to Cairns, as well as Tas, WA, Alice Springs...
Of course it's tickable, surely any self-sustaining population is (i think the official threshold is a 10 year period?) i think most feral LBC populations have been established for decades in Aust (though I have no specific data re SEQ population).
Unless you are a purist whom would only tick Common Myna in SE Asia or a Starling in Europe and pretend they don't exist in Australia...
How do you know that Sulphur-crested Cockatoo you ticked this morning didn't escape from a cage a few hours earlier?
at the end of the day no limitations can be imposed on one's personal list and you can tick whatever you want, i personally wouldn't tick captive birds at the zoo though.
All makes sense now. I hadn't thought of an escapee.
Many Thanks.
Samford Valley Qld.
Pizzey & Knight 9th ed. has (introduced) east coast range stated from south of Sydney to SEQ.
Long billed corellas are now found in small colonies along most of Eastern Australia they have even been seen in FN Queensland (and WA) the ,most of the Cocatoo family seem to be extending what we would call their normal range ,with the avalibility of permanent water and farming changing the food supply its going happen more and more ,just another example of human activity changing balance of nature .
Zosterops - the
at the end of my comment indicated that I was joking
and I got pics recently of 2 in Mackay
Peter
So what impacts are these isolated populations of Long-billed Corellas likely to have on other species? I wonder.
From what I've seen of local LBCs in Vic they seem to feed mainly on exotic weed tubers and roots like Romulea and various introduced grasses (just as well, but whether this is an actual preference or whether their original food plants have long been extirpated by human activity so they have no choice who knows, similarly it's regarded as something of a pest in grain crops though equally I don't discount that these same grain crops removed much former habitat and food resources).
They are very intelligent, i've read reports in FNQ that the LBCs learnt to copy Sulphur-crested Cockatoos and other parrots about how to extract seeds from Araucarias in the rainforest canopy, a very interesting adaptation for a usually ground-feeding species of the open plains.
They can also hybridise with Little and Western Corellas, the frequency of this occurrence I am unsure.
In Melbourne large mixed flocks of LBCs and LIttles are common, neither species used to occur here (both are 'natural' range expansions; they colonised new areas on their own accord but it was likely largely facilitated by human habitat modification of the landscape).
There might also be some competition for nest hollows and there seems to be concern from authorities about potential threats to horticulture and agriculture (perhaps moreso than the concern about potential competition with local bird species).
For the LBC this represents a turnaround, the species was regarded as rare in its original habitat only 30 years ago.
Nesting hollows thats another thing I was going to do a post on ,I have been spending a lot time on lake Fyans the electric motor on my boat allows me to get very close to nesting trees in past years these hollows were full of LBC's and Cockatos, this year a lot of them have Sea Gulls nesting in them.
By the way thats a really nice shot of a LBC shows its colours beautifully