Hi,
We live in an apartment in eastern Sydney and have been lucky enough to have two lorikeets settle down in the gutter next to our balcony. We think there is a cavity in the roof where they shelter, although don't want to get up on a ladder to look for fear of disturbing them! They arrived in about March this year and we assumed they were nesting but have never seen evidence of any baby lorikeets.
This morning I was out on the balcony and saw a huge black raven (or crow) hopping off the balcony where the lorikeets live. About an hour later the lorikeets returned and were clearly immensely distressed, screeching before even landing at their spot and keeping it up for ages. We have never seen them behave like this, and when we went out onto the balcony they seemed so incensed we quickly retreated! So my first question to the forum is whether ravens/crows are known to attack baby lorikeets and if this is what has happened? Do they actually eat the baby lorikeet or is it just a malicious attack?
About half an hour after this incident a kookaburra flew up onto the nearby TV aerial closely pursued by a raven, maybe the same one. The two were dive-bombed by some noisy miners and then the raven attacked the kooka as well. They flew off having a big fight. We love having lorikeets and kookas around and don't want the local 'bird ecosystem' upset by this new agressive raven. Is there anything we can do, or should we just let things run their course?
Thanks in advance for your insights!
Very interesting observations, Fae. It's at this time of the year when birds are establishing their breeding territories & the roof cavity may well be a place where the Lorikeets are nesting. Nestlings may be prey for birds like Ravens & Kookaburras which are also looking & competing for food for their own young. Where I live it's at this time of the year when lots of alarm calls go up when Little Ravens are in flight to & from their feeding patches.
If there's enough habitat for the Lorikeets then the loss of a nestling or two probably won't upset the overall Lorikeet population. It's all part of the wonderful world of nature and so often disaster results when humans intervene to do what they think is the best thing for the wildlife. Ensuring that there is adequate, high quality natural habitat is probably the most effective form of intervention humans can make.
Observe, learn & enjoy.
Thanks for your response. We'll keep our distance and see what happens...
Sadly today I had crows take an almost mature baby rainbow lorikeet from its nesting hollow in the street tree outside my Adelaide residence.
As the nest was visible from my lounge room I had witnessed the entire life of this bird, from the visits of the parents to select the nesting site, the constant shuttling of its parents feeding it, through to the constant vigorous cheeping I could hear all night long from my bedroom. the bird was almost ready to fly and I had just started to feel confident for it... being raised in a very wet mid winter I thought the odds were against it
Very very sad....
It's so heart wrenching & disappointing when a process you've closely observed from go to almost whoa comes to a sudden end, unfulfilled. This is especially so when the predator is a black "crow" (probably a Little Raven) & the prey is a beautiful, brightly coloured Rainbow Lorikeet.
Perhaps the greatest sadness for me is that we have so altered our natural environments that the survival of many bird species has been put at risk. This applies particularly to nesting hollows which Rainbow Lorikeets & many other bird species depend on for breeding. Our penchant for ensuring that our gardens & parks are cleared of old trees also ensures that nesting hollows are extremely scarce thus reducing breeding success.
Woko, Thank you for your comment
I am at an age where I am increasingly finding animals more worthy than most humans. I am terribly sad about losing "my" family, no sign of the parents now. Our cities are being overpopulated and overdeveloped thanks to our politicians patronage of the developer dollars.
I did have a humourous experience with a group of little Ravens, up to no good. I was working in the Cooper Basin in the 1970's and had a large amount of explosives under cover of a tarp... they were small cylindrical 30 gram TNT charges.. very potent and could do a lot of damage. A willy willy went through my camp and lifted the tarp... the local tribe of little ravens found the explosives a must have item.... and stole nearly 50 sticks before I noticed them. God knows what they did with them, we never recovered a single one or observed exploding Ravens.....
That's interesting, David. When I think about it I guess I'm encountering an increasing number of people who find it more comfortable to relate to animals than fellow humans. When I think further about this I'd have to say Western society, in spite of all it's marvelous attributes, isn't really about meeting basic human needs (Google <Abraham Maslov>) but rather about fruitlessly pursuing a continuous, materialistic, unsatisfying dream. Fundamentally unsatisfied people are often inclined to engage in rather dysfunctional behaviour (such as destroying nature on which they depend for their existence) which makes them difficult to relate to.
As to the dynamite-stealing Ravens I wonder how many of those sticks ended up as nesting material. A search of nesting tree sites might reveal some curious findings & give a new meaning to the term "boom recruits".