Swift parrots come and go during the spring and summer, and you have to be as fleet of foot as they are fleet of wing to catch up with them.
The usual happy hunting ground for a swift parrot fix is the blue gum forests of Bruny Island where they are common and easily seen.
This year, however, the swift parrots have not shown up, preferring gums richer in nectar and pollen along the East Coast.
The swift parrots are very much in the news this summer with revelations their population is far smaller than previously believed. Each year they are flying closer to extinction.
In past years the figure for the swift parrot population has been given as about 800 breeding pairs but the latest comprehensive survey by researchers from the Australia National University puts this number as low at 300 birds.
As can be expected, the revelation has sounded alarm bells and stepped-up activist campaigns for measures to arrest the decline. These include demands for a halt to logging in known swift parrot habitat.
The problem with swift parrot conservation is the parrots do not return to the same breeding and feeding areas each summer after spending the winter on the mainland.
In the swift parrots’ case, it is not just forest clearing that is a threat to their survival. The ANC researchers have also discovered that introduced sugar gliders – which, like the swift parrots, use nesting hollows – prey on parrots and their young in nest cavities.
In forests where the gliders and swift parrots overlap, the tiny mammals originally introduced as pets from Victoria have been found to eat 80 per cent of the parrot population.
A “save the parrot” rally on Parliament Lawns in December attracted more parrot supporters than birds that survive in the wild. Among speakers was the convenor of BirdLife Tasmania, Eric Woehler, who pointed out the “swifties” are one of only three species of migratory parrot. They all call Tasmania their home and the others are the critically endangered orange-bellied parrot – down to a mere 50 individuals – and the more common blue-winged parrot.
Although many protesters pointed a finger at Sustainable Timber Tasmania for parrot decline, an often unreported threat to the parrots is the activities of firewood “hookers” who log old-growth gums on private and state lands.
Researchers have been shocked to return to blue gum forests, in which they have identified nests in previous years, to find that the trees have been logged for the illegal firewood trade.
The threat to swift parrot habitat is not just confined to Tasmania. The felling of the parrots’ ironbark wintering grounds in New South Wales and Victoria is also critical.
The threat to the parrots is in fact flying from all directions, with the recent mainland forest fires also robbing them of winter habitat.