Galah

[den]

I could hear the squawks of a galah near the front door this afternoon. When I investigated I found the bird sitting on the front step, looking though the mesh door. It walked inside when I opened the door.

It sits on my hand, enjoys scritches and is very friendly. It's obviously an aviary escapee but I don't know where from since there are no large-parrot aviaries around here - it's all bugies for my neighbours. It's a juvenile: the feathers on its neck are fringed with grey.

The dogs investigated the bird immediately, but some judicious nips have given the bird a personal space of 1 metre on all sides. Poor Scruffy turned his back on the galah and it attacked him! It hung on to his tail while he ran in circles.

So now that we have established the pecking order (so to speak) the bird has settled into the back yard.

Now what do I do? I suspect it was raised in a small cage since it can't fly. It's "unreleasable" so technically I should euthanise it. And so I have. It has been euthanised into my back yard where it can hide in the trees.

Comments

[tygermoonfoxx.livejournal.com]

Good for you! If left alone in the back yard, it might either learn to fly on its own or be encouraged to fly....but I don't suppose that's terribly good as I didn't think that parrots were native to Australia.

Perhaps you've gained a new pet?

I really wish sometimes your adventures were Animal Planet videos; I'm always wondering what you're going to do next. No more bats? Or just a slow season for them? I don't think you've mentioned helping any in quite a while.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Australia has a few native parrots. Galahs (a type of cockatoo) are as common as rocks in Australia. We had to keep trees away from my house, in Australia, as we got all our drinking water from rain falling on the roof and running into the cistern, and if we'd had galahs, which perched in our trees in massive flocks, we would have been drinking much poo.

This is what the trees where I lived looked like:
http://bluebonnet.tripod.co.jp/Galah3.jpg

other pics:
http://www.qsl.net/vk6xc/images/antenna-galah.jpg
http://www.2docstock.com/galleries/Gallery%20A%20-Animals%20&%20Nature/pages/GALAHS.htm
http://bluebonnet.tripod.co.jp/Galah2.jpg
http://hillcrestbb.com/images/galahs2.jpg (some days the green belt around Adelaide looks like this)
http://www.mintabieopalfield.com/towntour/galahs-lg.jpg
http://www.zi.ku.dk/personal/drnash/media/oz99/galahs1.jpg

For what it's worth, I've seen these birds sold for $US3500 each, in America.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

They're certainly attractive birds. :) Are they very noisy?

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

When my host sister and I got really chatty, my host dad would say, "You two sound like a flock of galahs!"

So . . . yes. :)

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

When you have flock of 100+ all going SQUEE and YACK-ACK! they get a bit noisy. 8)

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

We have a lot of parrots here, but nothing as spectacular as Macaws and other South American birds. But don't forget budgerigahs are Aussie birds. 8) The wild ones are a dull olive green.

Galahs are called Rose-breasted cockatoos Over There. They're native to this area, along with sulfur-crested cockatoos, rosellas, red-rumped parrots, and the occasional king parrot.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

I haven't had a bat call for nearly 12 moths. I don't know what's happened. Maybe they started to look after themselves.