More than 30 individual Swift Parrots have been seen and photographed feeding on Southern Mahogany eucalypts in one small area of Raymond Island during April and May this year.
The Swift Parrot is one of very few migratory parrots, breeding in the forests of eastern Tasmania and flying (swiftly as its name suggests) across Bass Strait to Victoria, then dispersing to feed on flowering eucalypts, especially in the Box ironbark woodlands of southern and eastern Victoria and eastern New South Wales. On their way north in the autumn and back south in August-September, a small patch of the large, mature Southern Mahogany gums and Red Gums that
Swift Parrots prefer, lying just behind Western Boulevard on Raymond Island, receives the largest number of Swift Parrots of any site in Gippsland and has done for many years.
This autumn, local naturalist Robert Wright became aware of more than 30 Swift Parrots using this feeding site (and indeed his birdbath), with a succession of birds present for more than six weeks.
Raymond Island’s eucalypts were not in flower at that time, but the parrots can get their sugar fix from what is termed ‘lerp’. Lerp is a tent-like, white covering excreted by lerp insects (technically psyllids) of which there are many species, and which are rather like tiny cicadas. The lerp is made of excess starch or dextrose, which the insect excretes as it tries to suck as much protein as it can from leaves or branches.
Thirty birds might not seem a large number, but Swift Parrots are now critically endangered. In the late 1980s there were thought to be around 1300 pairs. Even then the 1991 Scientific Advisory Committee looking into their position concluded that they were “very rare in terms of abundance and distribution” and that they were “in decline likely to lead to extinction”.
Since then numbers have continued to decline with something under 750 individual birds and probably a breeding population of less than 340. Swift Parrots are listed as Critically Endangered under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act and under Victoria’s Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act.
So to have 30 or more birds at one traditional spot, starting their journey to their winter feeding sites, is quite significant.
The biggest threats to Swift Parrots are in their breeding areas. Radical reductions in the number and distribution of the old growth nesting gum trees is a major issue. Another is the result of an unfortunate introduction of Sugar Gliders into Tasmania in 1835. Despite their name, these endearing possums are carnivores when they get the chance, and the eggs, chicks and even incubating female Swift Parrots, fall prey to them. Fortunately, Bruny and Maria Islands off the Tasmanian coast are still free of sugar gliders making them increasingly important in the survival of Swift Parrots in the wild.
By coincidence the federal government has just released the latest Recovery Plan for Swift Parrot with a budget of $14 million over five years. It makes a number of strategy recommendations. Strategy one has half the budget and the first three action priorities are: To ‘Identify breeding and foraging habitat; To incorporate that information into government planning; To protect areas of ‘habitat critical to survival’ from developments (including residential developments, mining activity, wind and solar farms) and land clearing for agriculture through local, state and Commonwealth government mechanisms.
There have been 100 extinctions in Australia since Europeans arrived in 1788 – about 6-10 per cent of global extinctions since 1500 AD (33 of them mammals). For comparison the USA, with a similar land area and history of European settlement, has had only one mammal extinction.
The Australian Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has pledged there will be no more extinctions. A great deal of action will have to happen quickly if the Swift Parrot, and the even more endangered Orange-bellied Parrot and the Western Ground Parrot, are not going to follow the magnificent Paradise Parrot into extinction.
