lorikeets take no notice of food

raven12, you have observed exactly what I have, birds turn up for a feed if it's available, they only turn to artificial feeding if they are desperate. A quick growing plant they enjoy is a bottlebrush (callistemon), it also brings honeyeaters, silvereyes and insect eaters, if you are short on growing room it will grow in a very large pot quite happily. To encourage a wide range of garden visitors, you need to have three levels of cover, ground plants, bushes and trees. Look at what your neighbour has and supplement what is missing. A good layer of mulch such as lucerne hay encourages all the creepie crawlies which are someone's food. I have young peewits that have been bringing their young offspring to forage for creepie crawlies for a few years now. I do put some see out and as you say, mainly the doves and sparrows eat it, parrots only visit to eat when food is short. I am also mindful that we are squatting in their space and have removed some of their foraging area, with that in view, I am gradually growing plants and even grains they enjoy. The advantage of all this is that I never need to spray for grubs and whatever in the garden. Even the Indian Mynahs do their bit, I haven't had to spray for lawn grubs since they arrived in the area, therefore I don't mind a small group around. By the way, I have noted about forth regular species visit and another about ten very occasionally visit, we seem to be under a bird corridor.

From experience in my own backyard with them, one thing that lorikeets absolutely love is flowering gums! Unfortunately we had to remove the tree but this was the first time we had them come into our backyard and they would come everyday at least a few times in the morning and late afternoon (time depending on the temperature) until it stopped flowering. Not only that but I'm sure a few different types of honeyeaters wouldn't mind it being there either.

Hi Joe,

A bottle brush seed that I planted six months ago has germinated and grown and is now about a metre tall. A little bit of a fertiliser called 'blood and bone' helped it along nicely. A little of this fertiliser raked into the ground around the tree will make it grow steadily and quickly.

Several other seeds germinated at the same time but planted out weeks later are only half the size.

To collect and germinate your own seeds is easy but bottle brushes are quite cheap to buuy. Get one that is say half a metre tall, dig a hole a little deeper than the depth of the pot it is in and twice as wide. Sprinkle some blood and bone in the hole, cover with a sprinkle of dirt and plant your tree. Water it in well and next spring you may have your first flowers.

You can take just about any callistemon (bottle brush) and prune it regularly to keep it to a managable size we have some in our back yard that are perhaps 20 years old and have never been pruned, they are as tall as our house. We have lots of space so we can let them grow to however tall they want to be, but the same trees would be happy if we pruned them back too.

Kind Regards

Wollemi

I don't mind helping at all, don't forget to try your local plant nursery, they are only too willing to help. if you are lucky, you may even have a native plant nursery nearby. However, don't get too hett up about having only native plats, the birds are quite happy to have anything to perch on,eat insects off or take cover in. They need cover as well as food. I have gathered a great deal of information over the years which I am looking at putting into a website covering such things as the levels of vegetation, integration of the neighbouring vegetation and how birds use seasonal differences in the garden plants. I also have a collection of flower, bird and insect photos to add to it. Hopefully it would be a useful resource.

They'll eat anything if you encourage it to. They can even eat chicken (I'm serious). Those lorikeets probably learned how good bread tasted before they flocked there.

If you love feeding lorikeets that way and make all sorts of recipes for them, I suggest you get a pet lorikeet to be your food critic. You can feed them whatever you like (preferrably the natural stuff as always) as long as you keep its diet balanced and nutrient-rich. You can teach them to talk, dance, play, all sorts of tricks and they love licking you :p

You really should not be feeding Lorikeets flour and biscuits, it does no better to them as it does to us. They should not be encouraged to be drawn to non-natural sources or they'll become as aggressive as seagulls. It's made clear that a lot of problems arise from feeding them this way and is greatly discouraged. To attract them from the wild, take the very valuable suggestions about gardening a lot of people are giving you here- bring the suggestions to your parents, try to convince them to attract birds too ;)

Have you thought of using some of the birdseed to actually grow it in the garden? Sunflowers are both decorative and bird food, I find the King Parrots enjoy them. Corn from the seed pack is enjoyed by larger parrots, sit the cobs in a hanging container and the white cockatoos and galahs think they are made! Smaller seeds attract the smaller birds. Simply dot the seed around the whole garden. The garden looks a bit wild but the wildlife loves you.

Good luck with it. The bird bath should do a very good job for you in attracting birds. Surround it with some appropriate plants and you'll have flocks of them visiting your place. Not so sure about seeds. When we had poultry seeds were spilt everywhere which got the crested pigeons and turtledoves as well as some... rats. Not sure if the same happens with sunflower seeds.