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The Golden-Shouldered Parakeet by Joseph S
Mattinson
The Golden-shouldered Parakeet
Psephotus chrysopterygius is one of the most beautiful of the Australian
parrots, as well as being one of the most sought after species
by most aviculturists. It is moreover, a very notable bird, with a
great deal of publicity surrounding it. Most writers display a
complete lack of understanding of this species, both in the wild and
certainly in captivity. In this article, I wish to record for the
benefit of other members of the Society, details of the bird from personal
observations in the wild over a period of fifteen years and the results
of keeping this most celebrated of Australian parrots in my own collection
here at Rodney Park. It is hoped that members will be able to gain
some benefit from this article which may help to breed more of these
birds, which are becoming increasingly plentiful in aviaries, and also
that people will be able to have a more balanced view as to the problems
surrounding the species.
A description of the Golden-shoulder appears on
page 240 of "Parrots of the World" (1973) by J Forshaw, opposite an
excellent painting of the species. The male has forehead and lores
pale yellow; crown and nape black; underparts turquoise blue; lower abdomen,
thighs and under tail coverts scarlet tipped with white; upper parts
brown; rump turquoise blue; median wing coverts golden-yellow; under
wing coverts and outer web of flight feathers blue; tail greenish-blue,
lateral feathers tipped with white; wing stripe absent; bill
greyish; iris dark brown; legs greyish brown. The female has
crown and nape pale bronze-brown; upper parts and breast dull yellowish-green;
lower underparts pale blue with some red and white markings
towards the vent; wing stripe present. Immatures resemble female;
males are brighter on sides of head and under tail coverts; wing
stripe present.
I was always interested in
aviculture and had the pleasure to be invited to the aviaries of Sir
Edward Hallstrom and saw my first Golden-shoulders there. I was
immediately captivated by this bird, and resolved to do what Sir Edward
had never been able to do, and that was to breed a pure strain of this
lovely parrot and establish it in captivity. At no time was any
assistance received from Sir Edward, in that he never mentioned where the
birds came from and it was only through "the grapevine" that a very hazy
picture emerged as to where he had obtained this almost unknown bird.
We travelled to Cairns in 1960 and
went to the Department of Agriculture to try to obtain further clues, on
the whereabouts of "ant-bed parrots", as they are known in the north.
This was fruitless, but an official assured us that if we were successful
we would be given a permit for our birds, and eventually we were
fortunate enough to secure four males and one female which under permit
became the nucleus of our aviary stock here. Sir
Edward subsequently gave me one of his hybrid breedings - a cock, which
was consequently disposed of. The stock of Sir Edward's, as far as
we can ascertain, was not received under permit. In those days bird
keeping was quite different, and it wasn't so illegal to do
the sort of thing Sir Edward did, and that was to send collectors
out after an unheard of species. Hallstrom received two consignments from the north,
by Lear and Turner who paid indigenous Australians to collect them; the first
consignment was four birds and second was twenty. People should try to understand the
situation in those days; the bird was plentiful in areas, however as
we have found out, plentiful only in restricted localities, and
no one thought much about the legalities of
the situation. Of course, it is a different situation now and
the bird is heavily protected within its range.
Returning to the search for our Golden-shoulders; in
Cairns having left the Department of Agriculture we chartered a Cessna
aeroplane and travelled to every station on the peninsula. It was
unfortunate that at this very time the Leura picnic races were on, and
everyone from the stations were away, with only a few people
left. We eventually came to Musgrave Station and the pilot was immediately invited into
the homestead for a cup of tea as is the custom in the north. While
he was having his tea I wandered about a little and asked an indigenous lady, my by
now usual question, as to whether she had seen any Ant-bed parrots
around? To my surprise she answered "Ant-bed Parrots? Yes I
see!" and continued "You come and I show you".
Under the homestead we found a young girl, a cook who was
working for the cattle station, and there in a box were three baby Golden-shoulders
which a "fella" had brought in to her. She was hand
rearing the little babies and one died, but the other two were
absolutely gorgeous. I subsequently wrote to the lady in charge of
Musgrave, who very kindly invited me up the following year so that I might
find and study this bird, and I have done that for ten seasons
since.
The feeding and nesting area is therefore very moist. I
haven't been fortunate enough to be in Golden-shoulder country for a
full twelve months, but have a theory that if there is a
late wet or a very dry season they will seldom breed. A major reason is
that it needs a lot of rain to soften the ant beds, which will become
puggy such that it is possible to poke holes in them with the finger. At
this time the female will make as many as 10 "start holes" in
the surface of the damp ant bed, as I have shown in lectures to the
Society. We call them "start holes" because the hen makes many of
them and none are very deep, perhaps because some may turn out to be unsuitable
for her. While the ant bed gets very soft in the west
season, they become so hard afterwards that a pick is needed to penetrate
the outer layers. Both parents feed the young and enter the nesting
chamber. I have never seen a male feed a female before entering the nest,
so assume that he also feeds the young
ones.
Now on one trip up to the Cape some
indigenous Australians opened up a nest some three days prior to our arrival.
When we arrived they told us about it and we immediately went out
to the nest, and saw the ant bed which had been broken over but
replaced. Spider webs were over the front opening and to the rear of
the nesting chamber which had been broken, which indicated that the parents
had not returned to the nest since the
break.
I said to the man with me "What a
shame! We could have put those eggs under a budgie back at the
station had we arrived sooner" and then said "Oh well, no use crying over
spilt milk" and tossed the eggs on the ground. To my surprise the
eggs contained three embryos which were very much alive, and to my
knowledge the nest had not been attended for 72 hours. The
temperature range in the area is 30oC plus during this period, and because
of the wet conditions I have already described, the humidity is also very
high - tropical conditions. These conditions inside a
termite mound result in a natural incubator being
formed.
Golden-shoulders do not normally
nest in magnetic termite mounds, usually because these mounds
are not wide enough, and moreover have many small side branches coming off
the main mound which is flat and aligned in a N-S direction. I have followed Golden-shoulder
tunnels for up to two feet in magnetic mounds always to find them
abandoned because they have struck light, and not
found an area large enough to excavate a
chamber.
A question of course which arises is why do
Golden-shoulders nest in termite mounds when there are hollows in trees around?
I would think that one advantage would be the problem of ants
which are very bad in the tropics. The big meat ants are everywhere, but
are prevented from reaching the nests which are constructed in black
flats due to the swamp forming a sort of moat around the mound. I
have photographs of nests where meat ants have gained admittance due to
the swamp at the base of the mound drying up, and all that was left
of the babies were the skeletons. This could also be why they not
only ignore trees, but also the termitaria in the red earth on the
hillsides - the meat ants could be a significant selecting agent. The Golden-shoulders build in
the cone shaped black termitaria from about two to three and a half
feet from the ground, but I have seen
holes as high as six feet from the
ground.
Termite mounds do not necessarily
last a long time in these areas. They are very rapidly built, and
one only three feet high can be raised to six feet within a very short
time. When termites are working their nest they may add a foot in
two or three days, but the nests tend to fall apart rather quickly when
the termites die. Termites will eventually seal a Golden-shoulder
nest after it has been vacated since they cannot seal it while the birds
are coming to and fro. The termites seal from the outside in, and I
have broken open old mounds where I knew old nests had existed and they
had completely closed up the tunnel and chamber until it was
solid, but for their little galleries running through it. One can always see
where the parrots have been, because the colour
of the repaired part is always a different
shade.
One year in one little area only, I
found a few nests with an insect of some sort attached to a dead
Golden-shoulder. I have since found that they were the head and jaws
of the protector or soldier termite. Whether they killed the birds
I don't know, but some nests had three to five dead young in them with
these insects attached to the feathers which made them look like blood
suckers at first, since they were attached to the ends of wing and tail
feathers which as is known are blood filled shafts when they
are sprouting. On one occasion I saw a hen emerge from a nest and
act strangely, and thought that something was wrong with her so chased
her and caught her in the grass. All around the eyelids were these
termite soldiers looking like so many ticks, and
causing her not to be able to see
properly.
I have also noticed that parent
birds will at some time during the day before entering the nest go and
pick bark from a eucalyptus tree. They always seem to do this, and
I don't know why, but even captive birds will begin chewing in the
breeding season, and will even chew the corner
from a brick, for what reason I don't
know.
As
is known,
Sir Edward Hallstrom had birds prior
to me, and I think perhaps he may have bred Golden-shoulders, but he
certainly bred many hybrids. His birds were also over tame;
whereas mine are tame but not spoilt. Hallstrom was in an
unfortunate position because he couldn't go to study the bird in the wild and
then apply what he had learnt to the avicultural situation, which is what
I did. Had he been able to do so, so many mistakes would not have
been made, for example, his birds were all in concrete floored and concrete
walled aviaries which were the sort Sir Edward liked, but totally inadequate
for the Golden-shoulder. You must have good flooring, and we
have ground that is a mixture of coarse sand to a depth of a few inches is
the
best.
We have found that when a pair get
into breeding condition it has a very profound effect on the other
birds. When one pair get into condition, the adjoining pair may not
be as advanced, and the one on the other side may not be in condition at
all. When the adjoining birds hear the sounds coming from the next
aviary, especially the little musical chuckling mating song of the male,
they get very anxious, and they will bite a little hole in the fibro where
there may be a small chink. If the adjoining male can see the
displaying and mating of the pair next door, he will very soon display to
and mate with his own hen. I think that this shows that if you have
only one pair of Golden-shoulders your chances of breeding them would be
much less than
if you had two or three
pairs.
Now it would certainly not be
better to have wired divisions so that adjoining pairs were completely
visible, because in this situation the cocks spend too much time fighting
instead of mating with the females. Breeding records from such
aviaries are never as good as in aviaries such as I have described.
By giving the Golden-shoulders the conditions I have outlined, such that
the "imaginations of slower breeders are stirred", if I may use this term,
then these not-so-good pairs are greatly improved. It is a theory
which certainly appears to work, and is the main reason for transferring
most
of the Golden-shoulders into this front
block.
When
I was still living in Sydney, a lot
of Golden-shoulders were reared, but it wasn't until I moved here that I
found out what sort of nest box was required. When I moved here I
had only five pairs of Golden-shoulders. A range of aviaries was built
and they were supplied with nests, - boxes of various sizes and logs.
Back in Sydney the best hen reared young in a box which had a little
narrow spout in front of the nest hole, a homemade spout of four
pieces of timber forming a tunnel. I made boxes from 1" pineboard
with internal measurements of 12" x 7" x 9" high with a 2" hole in
the front with a little perch. It dawned on me that my birds should
be nesting much better than they did, and remembered the box of the
old hen at home. Perhaps the entrance was at fault, because the
birds would go to the hole but not enter as if they were afraid of going
in. We searched in the forest for some appropriate natural spouts of
about 6" and attached them to the boxes and within three weeks we had
every pair down. Now, every Golden-shoulder nest has a spout,
although the original hen did nest in a log
once.
When
we lived in Sydney humidity and
heat was always a problem, and I put plastic sheeting around the aviaries
to try to keep the heat level and moisture level up, but here at Fairy
Meadow it isn't necessary at all, as the aviaries are well protected and
much better built. One breeder in South Australia solves these
problems by keeping Golden-shoulders in a garage in indoor flights.
Infrared lamps are hung over the nest boxes to maintain
heat.
Females have a
tendency to leave the young ones unattended
at night after about four days. This behaviour in the
wild is not detrimental because of the climate, but in our aviaries
it is disastrous. If this happens, we take the chicks and keep
them warm during the night and return them to their parents the next day,
who will often take them back each day with no trouble. If the parents
refuse to take back the chicks we transfer them to Hooded Parakeets,
or hand rear them. Early breeding successes utilised
these techniques. Once over ten days old, the young ones don't
succumb quite so easily to nocturnal
desertion.
We
have twenty
pairs of Golden-shoulders, not all
of which are of course in breeding condition, and this year
raised about 60. There is still a significant death rate in
Golden-shoulders, and we should be raising well over a hundred each year,
but we are limited to the number which we can hand rear as this is
very time
consuming.
In the wild I have seen nests with
three eggs and some with nine; the average is five eggs. The most
young I have seen in a wild nest was eight. In captivity the results
are almost identical except that in the aviary one can have three
nestlings whereas in the wild there is usually only
one.
The hen
incubates for twenty one days,
and some hens will incubate for twenty four hours solid, while others will
leave their eggs for periods of up to three hours. Young remain in
the nest for five weeks. If the mother is not feeding properly they
may leave early, and some adventurous ones may leave at four weeks but
can't really fly properly. After hatching and drying, the young Golden-shoulder
is covered with a grey-white down and fluff. The down
is gradually replaced by pinfeathers, and there is a period when the
body areas are almost naked. This is a very critical stage, and
occurs at 10-11 days. The eyes open at 8
days.
We feed the birds two
diets here. The ordinary maintenance diet is white and Hungarian
millet, canary seed, sunflower, spinach, and biscuit. The don't
like apple. Cuttlefish is provided. For minerals I used to
supply them with Vita-Budgie blocks, but they don't eat these and chew
the brickwork instead. The base of the aviaries is washed
coarse sand. During the breeding season the diet is much the same but much
more spinach is supplied, plus more biscuit. I grow spray millet for
them, and also Sacchaline seed heads, milo heads - and these are all fed in
the milky stage. This is to what I attribute my early successes in
Golden-shoulders.
The breeding areas of the
Golden-shoulder were centres on Musgrave Station, as is well known to many
people, but Musgrave is now out. We have observed that their numbers
declined in two other areas, but they are nearly out there as well.
In the early days there was no trouble in seeing up to 500
Golden-shoulders, but now it would be hard to find fifty in the same
areas. Ten years ago in a breeding area, on horseback, I counted 164
Golden-shoulders. It is possible that I counted some more than once;
but six years later I counted 23 in the same area at a similar stage in
the breeding season. The numbers may be slightly out, but it gives
an indication as to the sort of decline. I have frequently observed
flocks of up to eighty birds in the breeding season. There was one
lady who had some twenty pairs come to water near her homestead. She
used to count them every day, and some days would get 23 cock birds and on
other days only 17 cocks; but the young ones and hens were too hard to
distinguish so she only counted the cocks. She said that every
evening she observed between thirty to forty birds coming to drink at the
waterhole virtually at her back door. This was in 1968, and the lady
has since died, but the birds are now only seen in odd pairs at this same
waterhole.
Why the decline? Well, I
don't think that it is due to illegal trapping as the authorities would
like everyone to believe. It may be a contributing factor, but is by
no means as important as most people think - it is always the way, with
most people jumping to an almost too obvious conclusion, whereas we know
that processes causing the decline of a species are usually many and
varied. The Queensland Government*
won't do anything for
the Golden-shoulder except to prohibit people from going near them
where possible. It is difficult to put forward suggestions when
no one has done a thorough study of the Golden-shoulder, and
without this much needed study it is impossible to do anything. The "head
in the sand" attitude of the Queensland authorities is deplorable. I have not
observed Golden-shoulders in the wild recently as it has become too
embarrassing, since every time I go there I am watched like
a hawk. Observation is now illegal in that disturbing them is illegal; you may not legally
observe a nest except by binoculars some five hundred yards
away.
Reasons for the decline could be as follows:
When the Queensland Government brought in equal
pay for indigenous stockmen with white stockmen, it meant that stations which
had indigenous workers couldn't afford to keep them on. People don't
understand how the aboriginal society works. In a population of
60-70 there would be ten here, twenty there, and their friends may come
for a visit, and every now and then a group would go walkabout. The
young aboriginal people are born hunters and they would catch many goannas,
a few snakes, and by using shanghais stone certain conspicuous birds
such as butcherbirds. These species are all predators of the Golden-shoulder,
especially the goannas in nesting times. The butcherbirds
are also a significant predator, and I have seen a butcherbird
alight on a mound and fly down and kill a Golden-shoulder cock bird as it
emerged from the nest. On our original trip to the Cape, we took
Many-coloureds with us to use as call birds, thinking that they would
cause a Golden-shoulder to show itself. One Many-coloured was put in
a wire cage up in a tree, and the Many-coloureds sang out. The
butcherbirds attack so savagely that one broke its neck on the bars of
the cage. I may mention that although in the same genus,
Many-coloureds were not successful as callers.
I have also observed in recent years the decline in the
number of nests of the parrot, and on asking station owners what they
thought, received the suggestion that it was due to the cane toads which
are moving northwards up the Cape at the rate of about fifty miles a
year. They are in plague proportions and are extremely detrimental
to the wildlife which is found from ground level up to about three
feet. Their numbers are so unbelievably great that they have to be
seen to be believed, and nothing I could say could convey to a member the
millions of cane toads which are in the north. On a wet evening, a
four wheel drive vehicle will run over countless thousands as one drives
along the roadway. At one station, I remember drawing a four gallon
bucket from a dam to find that there was three gallons of cane toads and
one gallon of water. Station owners have said that Golden-shoulders
have noticeably declined at the same time as the cane toads have become a
menace.
I might mention that another species which has had a
disastrous decline is the White-eared Masked Finch. Years ago we
would count over 300 at a waterhole, and today we don't even see
them. One man in the north counted only five in an entire
season. It was possible for me to walk along a track and find 20-30
White-eared nests, but now I don't find any. This finch nests very
close to the ground, and must suffer because of the cane toad. It
has never been a popular bird in aviculture, and has thus never been
trapped in any numbers.
I don't think that anyone can guess the number of
Golden-shoulders in the wild. Station owners keep me informed of
sightings by the stockmen, and I know the breeding grounds in some
detail, thus I could get a count for a rough idea of numbers, given
permission and the time being available.
Another problem which I would like to solve is
where the Golden-shoulder goes out of the breeding season. I did observe
two young Golden-shoulders in a mangrove virtually on Princess Charlotte
Bay.
On the western coast of the Cape from Normanton north
was the area originally described as their habitat. I have
travelled extensively in this area; right across the peninsula
200-300 miles to the west to Mitchell River Mission. All of this
area is no-man's land - it is desolate and barren country. The
Gilbert River runs down towards Normanton. There are excellent
possible breeding areas here but I have never seen a Golden-shoulder in
the area; one dry season a Golden-shoulder was reported to drink at a tank
hole at the Mitchell River Mission.
There is so much to record on
Golden-shoulders, but one has to stop somewhere. I hope that members
will have gained benefit from reading these notes, and people who have not
been fortunate as I in studying the bird in its native home may be able to
derive some benefit from the article, which they may then apply to their
Golden-shoulders. The aviculture of Golden-shoulders has been my
special interest for the last fifteen years and most problems have been
solved by referring to the habitat and behaviours of these beautiful birds
in the wild.
The problems of the wild
population are very real, but can only be solved by the cooperation of
everyone concerned. A prerequisite to any action is that a very
thorough study must be commenced on the Golden-shoulder in its habitat,
before there is any further decline in the populations of this beautiful
bird.
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