Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari.oz.au!sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au!spam!wvenable
From: wvenable@spam.ua.oz (Bill Venables)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: Indoor Antics
Message-ID: <332@spam.ua.oz>
Date: 11 Jul 90 17:00:56 GMT
References: <840@cfiprod.UUCP>
Organization: Statistics, Pure and Applied Maths, University of Adelaide
Lines: 37

In article <840@cfiprod.UUCP> susans@cfi.com (Susan Scheide) writes:
>
>Two cute stories:
>
>First, my blue budgie ...
>
>Second, my six month old cockatiel ...

Two Australian parrots!  How quaint.  I have a few questions for you
folks in the USA/Canada/UK, if I may

1) Are any other Australian birds popular pets?

2) Have any Australian birds managed to establish themselves as feral
   populations overseas?  (We have heaps of English, European and
   Asian feral species here, :-(, but no American as far as I know.)

Just a few snippets about Budgerigars and Cockatiels before I go.

Wild budgerigars are very numerous, but they live in such remote and
arid places they are rarely seen in the wild by most Australians. I
certainly have not seen one, and I have seen a good bit of the
country.  They tend to be a nomadic and irruptive species - they are
not seen for many years, and suddenly there might be a flock of
several thousand or more persistent in an area for several months. In
the wild, of course, they are always green.

Cockatiels I have seen in the wild, and fairly often.  On a recent
trip I saw a flock of perhaps 3000 or more feeding from a grain spill
near a railway line at Moree, New South Wales.  When I looked more
closely I saw that it was actually a mixed flock of cockatiels and
crested pigeons - which are also grey birds with a long wispy crest.
I guess when there is plenty of food there is no need to fight over it!

-- 
  Bill Venables, Dept. Statistics,        | Email:   wvenable@spam.ua.oz.au
  Univ. of Adelaide,  South Australia.    | Phone:           +61 8 228 5412