Sugar thief
Jun. 21st, 2010 07:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranOur first weekend back in Sydney, and we get confronted by a crazed white powder addict.
My parents had come up for a visit, so we took them out to the Botanic Gardens.
Yes, this is Sydney in the middle of winter, but don't get too excited, it's cold and wet already again now.
En route to the gardens, we stopped for lunch at Pavillion, just across from the Art Gallery. It was a nice warm day, so we sat outside and chatted while we waited for our food to come. All of a sudden, a bright green and red rosella turned up and started landing on people's shoulders, triggering various shrieks and gasps (mainly depending on just whose shoulder it was landing on).
The next thing, we know, it's jumped on to the middle of the table, plucked out a long sugar sachet from the bowl in the middle and disembowelled it right before us. It then proceeds to lick the entire table clean with a somewhat alarmingly big blue tongue (this, children, is why you don't eat food which has been dropped onto the table). As soon as it has finished, it goes after the next sachet, with a look of desperation in its eyes.
At this, I decide to try scaring it off, and it turns on me with talons outstretched in a way that would be scary if it wasn't effectively a mouse with wings. He's going to have one heck of a headache when that sugar rush wears off. I bang on the table and it flies off, dropping the sachet on the ground.
One of the waiters, who has evidently seen this before, quickly comes out to "save the rest of the sugar", and the rosella spends the next ten minutes or so plotting how to retrieve the dropped sachet before it is ultimately stolen by a jubilant (and maybe soon to be hyperactive) mynah.
My parents had come up for a visit, so we took them out to the Botanic Gardens.
Yes, this is Sydney in the middle of winter, but don't get too excited, it's cold and wet already again now.
En route to the gardens, we stopped for lunch at Pavillion, just across from the Art Gallery. It was a nice warm day, so we sat outside and chatted while we waited for our food to come. All of a sudden, a bright green and red rosella turned up and started landing on people's shoulders, triggering various shrieks and gasps (mainly depending on just whose shoulder it was landing on).
The next thing, we know, it's jumped on to the middle of the table, plucked out a long sugar sachet from the bowl in the middle and disembowelled it right before us. It then proceeds to lick the entire table clean with a somewhat alarmingly big blue tongue (this, children, is why you don't eat food which has been dropped onto the table). As soon as it has finished, it goes after the next sachet, with a look of desperation in its eyes.
At this, I decide to try scaring it off, and it turns on me with talons outstretched in a way that would be scary if it wasn't effectively a mouse with wings. He's going to have one heck of a headache when that sugar rush wears off. I bang on the table and it flies off, dropping the sachet on the ground.
One of the waiters, who has evidently seen this before, quickly comes out to "save the rest of the sugar", and the rosella spends the next ten minutes or so plotting how to retrieve the dropped sachet before it is ultimately stolen by a jubilant (and maybe soon to be hyperactive) mynah.
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no subject
Date: 2010-06-21 11:10 am (UTC)(I've got a friend called Rosella; I had no idea it was also the name of an Australian parrot.)
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Date: 2010-06-21 12:10 pm (UTC)I see from the details about them that they are fruit eaters, so they're obviously attracted to sweet things.
The licking must have been a bit weird to watch. I don't think I've ever seen a bird lick anything before. I didn't even know that they could.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-21 07:15 pm (UTC)