Drizzle after Christmas

Sad to see the festive season over, mother nature has turned on the tears. Much of the country is now in flood but here on the Gold Coast the rain is lighter and soaking into the ground. We had a gentle fall of rain through the night and when I went out this morning to feed the lorikeets I found them all over the chairs and the table trying to keep out of the weather. They looked all drab and miserable!
Feeling a bit sorry for them I gave them twice as much breakfast - they get raw sugar mixed with water. I only give them a tablespoon of sugar to a litre of water so the mix is quite thin. I have also found that the birds are not interested in the juice unless there is bread to sop it up! They like to hold the bread between their beaks and suck the juice out!
Anyway, the birds shoved and pushed their way into the sugared bread mix and gobbled it all down in the same amount of time they normally do - So I have resolved not to give in to their pleadings and give them as much as they crave, I do not want them to become dependent on being hand fed. The trees are loaded with flowers and they must work for their meals! Nectar is their main source of food but they do enjoy a few seeds too - especially sunflower seeds.Here are the wet lorikeets scrambling through the wire cage over their feed dishes. The terracotta dish contains the seeds. The cage is to keep out the large cockatoos, it does not restrict any of the other smaller birds. They do not see it as a barricade. They treat it as if it were a climbing frame.
As you can see from the colour of the birds the emerald green of the feathers has become a drab bottle green and the brilliant orange on their chests a muted red colour. After feeding the birds scattered to the trees in pairs and spent the next half hour preening - the rain stopped while they were dining.
AJ