loripeets

Gully called them that when he was little and it's stuck.  we have five totally wild,noisy and crazy 'runners' in an avery up the back of the garden - our small way of assisting Judith with her Wildlife Ark bird rescue.  our lorikeets have psittiscine circo virus, more commonly known as beak and feather.  their flying wings have not developed, hence the name runner.  they can't fly.  we rescued our first bird, Jasper about august last year.  i was on my way to pick Gully up from school when i heard a commotion and saw a crow and a kookaburra attacking him in the mud below a mangrove tree.  Judith showed us how to care for him and lent us her spare avery.  because the virus can spread to other psittiscine species (parrots), we offer a local isolation recovery ward for lorikeets.  Jasper has long since recovered and flown off.  he was so tame when we first got him, we could hold him and could have focussed on taming him, but we decided to let him stay wild in the hope he would recover. here he is enjoying fresh flowers picked by Gully, River and Akira.  at least two more of our birds are recovering and growing their flight wings the other three don't look so promising.  we named our first two birds Jasper and Jack after Gully and River's cousins.  the new ones are baby one, baby two, baby three and baby four.