Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

Meet One of My Parrots 1

Posted by "GrrlScientist" on April 28, 2008
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Odysseus.

Male yellow-bibbed lory, Lorius chlorocercus, April 2008.

Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view].


This parrot is a lory. Lories are a group of nectar-feeding parrots that are from islands in the south Pacific Ocean. This particular species originates on the Solomon Islands. When I lived in Seattle, I had a flock of 8 species (30 individuals) of lories that I bred, raised and trained for most of my life, and I studied the evolution of the lories for my postdoctoral work. When I left Seattle to pursue my postdoctoral work, I gave up all of my lories, except for a few birds, like this one, which I brought with me to NYC.

I hand-raised this particular bird from a fluffy, blind chick that was so small he could sit on top of a quarter. Now he is a little larger than an American robin, and weighs roughly 130 grams.

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Comments

  1. #1 John
    April 28, 2008

    Very cute!

  2. #2 Bob O'H
    April 29, 2008

    So that’s the red lory. Do you have a yellow one to go with it?

    Last night I was thinking that we hadn’t had any updates on your parrots, and here we go. This may not be entirely coincidental.

  3. #3 Nick
    April 29, 2008

    That’s a very, very pretty bird. What do you feed nectar feeders? (Waiting for the ‘duh, nectar’ :P )

  4. #4 Sam Wise
    April 29, 2008

    Whew…

    I was scanning over article headlines in my RSS feed reader, and clicked on through to this article when I thought the hed said “Meet One of My Parents.”

    Imagine my surprise.

    Nice looking bird, BTW — sure knows how to pose for the camera!

  5. #5 bob levy
    April 29, 2008

    Do you name all your birds? Is this the famous movie star Peter Lorry we’ve heard so much about?
    Ouch!

  6. #6 "GrrlScientist"
    April 29, 2008

    actually, this is the yellow-bibbed lory. there is a red lory as well, but this bird ain’t it. there are no yellow lories, though.

    i added the bird’s name .. odysseus. the female (who is a little more camera-shy) is named calypso.

    i feed my lories on a diet of Nekton-Lori (a special diet for lories and other nectar-feeding birds), and chopped fruits in season and vegetables with real fruit juice (mango, guava, or passion fruit) mixed in, with a little ornabac sprinkled over everything (ornabac is beneficial bacteria in powdered form — they revive quickly enough when sprinkled over sweet foods).

  7. #7 themadlolscientist
    April 29, 2008

    What a handsome fellow! I was wondering when I was going to get to see some pix of your feathered housemates!

  8. #8 Dorothea
    April 30, 2008

    SOooooooooooooooooo cute