Abstract
My association with this amazing parrot goes back to 1968. I was contracted to an American Television Documentary team who was planning on going to Cape York Peninsular, North Queensland, Australia to film the Great Palm Cockatoos.In those days, little was known about the Australian Eclectus Parrot. Most species held by Australian aviculturists were Eclectus roratus polychloros or solomanensis which originated from imports the late Sir Edward Halstrom imported into Australia from Papua New Guinea and the Soloman Islands prior to 1954.
It was during the eight weeks I spent in Cape York in July and August 1968 that I first saw these birds. We were setting up to climb a Palm's nest to film, which was located on the edge of thick rainforest. These birds would start to call out their alarm calls and, on many occasions, quite large groups of mostly males would be flying about screeching loudly. It was not until the following year I realized that the reason for mostly males flying around was all the females were nesting.
Over the course of the next 20 years or so, I spent many hours watching these birds, learning all I could about them and their breeding and feeding habits in the wild.
The Australian Eclectus would mainly nest in the large Ficus trees in deep rainforest on the edge of a river or creek. They sometimes nest in colonies. In fact, I have located up to three active nests in the same tree. Small family groups would all fly together when disturbed and it was not uncommon to see up to three males attending one female at nest.
Those nests were all above a height of 80 feet and would require a lot of hard work to inspect the nest at this height, and if you were not a climber then you had to take one with you.
In those early days, it would take us
up to four hours or so to climb these large trees. These Fig trees would go up 50 feet before there would be a branch to which we could attach a rope. Over the years, I have developed a system by which we could climb most trees in less than an hour.
From 1972 to 1978, I was based in Cairns, North Queensland, where I developed a small bird park that was open to the public. I had on display many species of Australian parrots and in 1974 I was granted a collecting permit for the Australian Eclectus. I made three expeditions to Cape York that year, the first two to refresh my memory and to gather fresh data and to locate new nesting sites.
In November, I collected a number of fledglings, returned to Cairns and handreared the chicks until they were 14 weeks old and placed them in the aviary for the first time. When these birds matured, which took three years, I realized their true beauty and how large they were. I had two breeding pairs of Polychloros on display in the bird park and when they were placed in the same aviary for comparison the size difference was unbelievable - at least six inches larger, due mainly to the longer tail. The Polychloros has a short stocky tail where the Macgilliurayi has a long tail tipped with pale yellow (male) and the male's beak is a deep coral orange color, where Polychloros has a pale yellow-orange colored beak.
On the field trips to Cape York from 1974 to 1984, one could not help but be amazed by these birds. By this time I had an extensive knowledge and I knew with proper housing and diet these birds would breed well in captivity.
In 1978 my family and I moved back to northern New South Wales to concentrate on a breeding facility that was not open to the public. This way I could devote more time to breeding and research of some of the rarer Australian parrots. I only had about 30 breeding aviaries and these were conventional type, 12 feet long, three feet wide and seven feet high and not suspended.
Over the next few years I visited many aviculturists who had Eclectus Parrots, to see if I could locate any Macgillivrayi to add to the number I had. They were very scarce and females were impossible to obtain so I did not have much to work with. In 1985, with three males and two females, I started my breeding program.
All birds were placed in a large flight aviary so they could pair up naturally. Once paired, they were moved into the breeding flights. Their diet consisted of 75% fruit and 25% seed. The fruit was made up of banana, pear, apple, grapes, guava, wild figs and cotoneaster berries, which only fruited in winter and was a favorite diet of Gang Gang Cockatoos in the wild. Their seed diet consited of grey sunflower, millet and plain canary seed and during winter some hulled oats were added, along with some pine nuts and other tidbits.
The nest box was 30" deep and 12" square with a metal ladder inside to allow the bird to climb down rather than jump. An inspection door was at one side but this was difficult and as most breeders of Eclectus would know, they become very aggressive when nesting. Males will attack and I had to wear a hat to ward off a male that would delight in hopping on my shoulder but then proceed to bite my neck, and you know when you have been bitten by an Australian Eclectus! Although all the birds were handraised, once they had paired up and were nesting, you could expect to get a bite or two.