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From: andrewt@cs.su.oz (Andrew Taylor)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: Indoor Antics
Message-ID: <1092@cluster.cs.su.oz>
Date: 13 Jul 90 01:59:52 GMT
References: <840@cfiprod.UUCP> <332@spam.ua.oz>
Sender: news@cluster.cs.su.oz
Reply-To: andrewt@cluster.cs.su.oz (Andrew Taylor)
Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Australia
Lines: 36

In article <332@spam.ua.oz> wvenable@spam.ua.oz (Bill Venables) writes:
>In article <840@cfiprod.UUCP> susans@cfi.com (Susan Scheide) writes:
>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?

I've seen caged Zebra Finches in most countries I've been to. It can be
confusing. Recently alking through the suburbs of Jerusalem I heard bird-calls
which suprisingly I was sure I knew but I just couldn't make the association. 
Several days later I walked past a pet store with caged finches and it
clicked - it had been (caged) Zebra Finches calling. Gouldian finches
seem to be kept commonly overseas too. They must be far more in captivity
than in the wild because they are high on the endangered list with
only several thousand left in the wild.

>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.)

Various Australian birds have feral populations on Pacific Islands
(including Hawaii) e.g Australian Magpies in Fiji. Outside the Pacific
the only feral populations I know of are Budgies in South Africa,
Florida, Hawaii? and Britain??. There is a definitive reference:
"Introduced birds of the world" by John Long. It attempts to list
all feral bird populations.

>Wild budgerigars are very numerous, but they live in such remote and
>arid places they are rarely seen in the wild by most Australians.

Which is sad. The sight of a large flock of budgies wheeling so the early
morning sun catches there underwing is so beautiful everyone should get to
see it. Another spectacle is flock of budgies flushed from the undergrowth,
an explosion of green and yellow.

Andrew