Endangered Swift Parrots battle for living space

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Critically endangered Swift Parrots are under threat from squirrel-like sugar gliders in a battle for space in Australia's forests, scientists said Wednesday, as they race to save the rare birds.

Swift Parrots are migratory and only breed in the southern island state of Tasmania.

But the nomadic nectar-eating birds' nesting grounds – gum trees – are also popular with sugar gliders, small possums believed to have been introduced to Tasmania in the early 19th Century.

The marsupials, which launch themselves from tree to tree and rarely descend to the ground, eat the nesting birds as well as their eggs and chicks, scientists from the Australian National University (ANU) said.

Endangered Swift Parrots./AFP Photo

This year, both species are battling for real estate on Tasmania's east coast due to eucalyptus flowering in the region.

"In some of these places, we've never had a chick survive," ANU conservation scientist Dejan Stojanovic said.

"If we don't intervene immediately, this year could be a huge blow to the conservation of this species."

Stojanovic and his team have designed nesting boxes with light-sensitive doors that open at sunrise and close at sunset, protecting the parrots from the sugar gliders which tend to be more active at night.

Conservationists have designed nesting boxes with light-sensitive doors that open at sunrise and close at sunset./AFP Photo

The doors are powered by solar panels and have backup batteries, with the team setting up a crowd-funding campaign to pay for them to be fitted onto 100 nesting boxes already in the area.

Early tests were successful and the birds "didn't mind the machinery", Stojanovic said.

Swift Parrots usually arrive from the Australian mainland in August before flying back north in February and March after the breeding season, according to Tasmania's Parks and Wildlife Service.

There are no current population numbers, but a 2011 assessment cited by the Australian government estimated there were only about 2,000 mature birds, with the population in decline.

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Source(s): AFP