King Parrot behaviour

Just before xmas I was alerted by a friend that he had what he thought were King Parrots nesting in his back yard. While this sounded good there was something else...they were nesting on the ground!

This caused me to hot foot it over to confirm that this was true, and indeed it was. The birds had scraped a patched of ground and laid four eggs near his pumpkin patch. I have not been able to find any other records of this ever happening with King Parrots so I was keen to monitor the unique event. My concern was always that predation and weather may play a factor with both the eggs and young. This turned out to be a warranted concern.

The day after New Years Day I went to visit the site and was saddened to see the nest had been abandoned. No trace of eggs at all and of course no need for the parents to remain. Hopefully they have now learnt to use tree hollows although I would have loved to have seen the eggs make it through to hatching as they were only about a week off their incubation period being complete.