Swift parrots are known to undertake the longest migration of any parrot worldwide but one bird has taken marathon flight to a new level. Instead of landing at the usual destination of Victoria or southern New South Wales after a flight from Tasmania, the long-distance parrot overshot the Australian mainland altogether last month and ended up on Lord Howe Island in the Tasman Sea.
The single parrot landed on a chicken coop and its arrival was immediately brought to the attention of wildlife biologists who were working on the island’s rodent eradication program.
The parrot was caught and, to keep it out of harm’s way, placed in an aviary that had been used to hold Lord Howe Island currawongs. The currawongs had themselves been placed out of harm’s way so they would not be poisoned by the baits laid to kill feral mice and rats.
The swift parrot has been headline news on birding websites, with Birdlife Australia noting that to reach Lord Howe Island, the bird would have flown at least 570 kilometres from the mainland. This feat is almost certainly the longest cross-ocean movement by any parrot in the world, and luck was on the swift parrot’s side, because if it had missed Lord Howe Island, it would certainly have perished in the sea.
The only other migratory parrot is also a Tasmanian one, the orange-bellied parrot which each year undertakes a shorter journey, travelling to saltmarsh habitat along the Victorian and South Australian coasts.
Both species are critically endangered, the orange-bellied parrot down to just over 100 individual birds. The population of the swift parrot is estimated to be about 2000 birds, still a number low enough to give cause for concern about its eventual survival.
Both parrots are monitored on the mainland during their absence from Tasmania, and this year more detail was obtained about the swift parrots’ movements in winter. Observers sighted 301 individuals, a second bird also proving to be a long-distance traveller after being spotted in southern Queensland.
The observers found three clusters of swift parrots, in central-west Victoria, the metropolitan Melbourne area and in greater Sydney.
Habitat loss is a major threat to both the Tasmanian parrots, this state and on the mainland. The orange-bellied parrot has lost much of its saltmarsh domain over the years, and the swift parrot has suffered because of the removal of blue gum forests in which it feeds and nests. The swift parrot also falls victim to predation by introduced sugar gliders in its nesting areas in eastern and south-eastern Tasmania.
The migratory journey is a perilous one for both species, with many not returning to Tasmania. There was a happy ending to the story of the Lord Howe Island parrot, however. It was flown back to the mainland and, after a health check at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, was released among a flock of travelling parrots in New South Wales.