INCREDIBLE feeding frenzy! Parrots as pollinators “swarming”.
INCREDIBLE feeding frenzy! Parrots as pollinators “swarming”?
Hello everyone. We captured this short video clip of a large flock of native Australian parrots a little while ago and you may find it interesting. Especially in light of the short article below. Birds are better pollinators than insects. Interesting. Native Australian parrots
would definitely be one of them, and in this clip you can see how noisy they can be when in a feeding frenzy. Aren’t they beautiful though, and not the least bit concerned about me video recording them. Enjoy, share, comment, or subscribe if you wish to see more great videos in the future.
Interesting article:
Birds are better pollinators than insects
“Bees don’t see red very well at all,” Adrian told Australian Geographic. “By mapping the history of the flower evolution, it was possible to show that red flowers pollinated by birds actually evolved from flowering plants that used to be insect-pollinated.”
A possible advantage of attracting birds, is that some insects can be inefficient pollinators. The change in colouring, Adrian says, “enables plants with red flowers to get efficient delivery of pollen to enable sexual reproduction, and avoid having nectar stolen by insects.”
Professor Marie Herberstein, an ecologist at Macquarie University in Sydney, says the discovery about the interaction between plants and their pollinators is very interesting.
Marie says that while it has been known for some time that insects are attracted to blue, this is the most complete study showing that bird pollinators are attracted to red.
“This is particularly significant in Australia as we have more bird pollinators than any other continent,” Marie says.
From: http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2013/03/red-flowers-the-trick-to-attracting-birds/
