Things are looking up, especially for bird watchers as a beautiful but endangered bird flits through the trees of Melbourne’s north.
With its vivid green body, crimson throat and purple tail, you can’t miss the swift parrot as it darts between the eucalypts near La Trobe University’s Bundoora campus while on its migratory path up the east coast.
Botany researcher Denise Fernando, who has had a life-long interest in the pretty parrots, was in the right place at the right time last Wednesday morning.
She and a group of bird lovers spotted about 35 birds near Macleod train station. She said the parrots were drawn to the area’s greenery.
“As a community, we owe it to these birds to look after what remnant habitat is left and celebrate that they’re here,” she said.
“Protecting our big native trees is crucial to the survival of this bird, which is teetering on the brink of extinction.
“Our parrots form an iconic Australian bird group that evolved here. Preserving this small, vulnerable group is not just a local issue; it’s of national importance and even globally important, given that swift parrots occur only in south-east Australia and nowhere else, with only 1000 breeding pairs left in the wild.”
