If ever you want to show an overseas visitor to Australia how wonderful and in-your-face our wildlife is, one of the easiest things you can do is show them a Rainbow lorikeet. These brightly coloured birds are very active, garrulous, and easy to spot.
They are one of the most common birds not just in our area, but all of Australia. This is not actually a good thing though. We’ve created some conditions that have allowed them to thrive, and their aggressive nature has allowed them to take full advantage of it.
From around the 80’s/90’s onwards there was a strong movement to plant more native trees in people’s gardens, which is a good thing, but often it was mass produced grevilleas and callistemons that weren’t native to the areas where they were planted. This has created a uniformity of habitat that Rainbow lorikeets have been able to exploit, and then use to further expand their range. They have even been introduced to new areas including Tasmania and Western Australia, where they weren’t previously known. This has caused all sorts of problems for the local parrots who have to compete with them (often unsuccessfully) for nesting hollows.
Rainbow lorikeets have a specialised tongue which is covered in papillae which effectively makes their tongue a big mop – with a very large surface area to soak up nectar. This is a great trait to have in Australia, as our plants produce so much sugar rich nectar.
Rainbow lorikeets have also adapted very well to tree lined city centres, which they use to roost in. This is because the added light allows them to watch for predators more easily, and with a flock of hundreds (and in some cases thousands) of birds all roosting together, there is much a greater chance that one member will spot a threat. This has meant that their loud chatter is a common feature of many Australian towns and cities around dusk now.
Their evolutionary history is even more interesting than the recent changes in their lifestyle. Rainbow lorikeets form part of a super-species that comprises twenty-three highly similar lorikeets in Papua New Guinea and the Sahul and Sunda islands. This super-species first evolved 800,000 years ago and underwent a rapid diversification within the last 50,000 years. This has given us our Rainbow lorikeets, along with the highly similar Red-collared lorikeet in the northern Territory and Western Australia. Despite their visual similarities they are definitely different species, with the Rainbow lorikeets colonising Australia from Papua New Guinea, and the Red-collared lorikeets colonising Australia from eastern Indonesia.
Rainbow lorikeets of course aren’t the only lorikeet we get in the Crows Nest area – we are also blessed with Scaly-breasted lorikeets, Musk lorikeets and Little lorikeets. Scaly’s can be thought of as slightly smaller and greener Rainbow lorikeets, as their habits are very similar. Little and Musk lorikeets are quite different – they are smaller and very hard to identify on the wing as they fly very quickly. They are both nomadic and move through our area following the blossoms around.
This article first appeared in the Crows Post, November 2025