Swift parrot rapidly winging towards extinction
Submitted by Chickowee on 29 Mar 2015.
The swift parrot, Australia's fastest nectar-eater, is suffering such a catastrophic population decline that conservationist biologists are pushing for the brightly-coloured bird to be urgently listed as critically endangered.
The parrot lives much of the year in Victoria and New South Wales where it feasts on the nectar of flowering gums. But when it migrates to Tasmania to breed, it comes under attack from predatory sugar gliders, research shows.
With an already slim population of less than 2000 birds, conservationists have warned that numbers could halve in just four years – and crash by as much as 87 per cent in three generations, according to findings outlined in a paper published in the journal Biological Conservation.
