Many years ago while we were renovating there was a big thunderstorm. Our house was half finished, the structure was up and the roof was on, but there was no plaster on the interior walls and two small windows hadn’t been installed yet.

At the start of the storm, two King Parrots (most likely ancestors of one of these) flew in through the small windows and sat in the wall structure while it was too dangerous to shelter outside. Every 15 minutes or so they would stretch their wings and fly around the rooms, then when the storm was coming to an end they both flew up to the windows, sat for a bit and flew off.

Ever since then their whole family has come to visit us regularly, usually a male and female, and up to three younger birds. Even though we never feed them, we just sit and talk to them (and take a lot of photos), they just seem to love company.

Yesterday these two came and hung out on the verandah with us for about 30 minutes. The male chattered away and was keen to get a good look at what we were working on, while the female sat a bit further away. She normally keeps an eye out and flies off first, but yesterday she must have been pretty tired because she almost fell asleep.

King Parrots are mid-sized Australian parrots. They are bigger than a Rosella, Lorikeet or Budgerigar, but smaller than a Cockatoo.

The male King Parrot is most obvious with his bright red head and chest. He also has a few blue feathers that blend in with the darker green ones, and a stripe of light green feathers down each wing (which can be seen in photos below).

The female has a green head and red feathers lower down on her chest. She also has some dark blue on her lower back (hidden under her wings in this photo), it blends in quite well with her green feathers and the colour is often overlooked.

This side view of the male King Parrot shows the light green stripe. You can also see he has a mostly red beak while the female’s beak is grey.

Juvenile King Parrots have similar colouring to the female until they are a few years old when the males start to get their red plumage.

This is his curious pose.

A chatty little fellow, this photo was taken mid-sentence.

All photos were taken with my Fujifilm X-A7 and 50–230mm lens.