A Million ‘Pretty Boys'

When conditions are right, Australia’s wild budgerigar populations explode and form gigantic super-flocks – a far cry from a talking parakeet in a cage. Helen Pilcher investigates.

At first it was quiet. In the heart of the Australian outback, the waterhole lay silent and still; an undisturbed oasis in the vast expanse of scorched, terracotta earth. All around it the unforgiving desert stretched as far as the eye could see, peppered only with the occasional parched shrub or straggly coolabah tree. Then, as the sun began to rise, it appeared as if from nowhere.

In the distance, cutting through the early morning haze like a twisting gymnastics ribbon, a strange cloud rose and fell, twisted and turned, casting a series of sinuous silhouettes against the cloudless sky. Ever-changing, never still, the bizarre shape-shifter danced its way out of the distance towards the waterhole. As it came closer, the blue sky turned green, and the amorphous mass resolved into the tiny bodies of hundreds of thousands of colourful birds. They wheeled wildly, screeching chaotically. The collective beating of a million wings was almost deafening.

Sitting quietly near the water’s edge, naturalist and wildlife photographer Roland Seitre found himself immersed in one of nature’s most impressive and under-appreciated spectacles; a super-flock of wild budgerigars. “I was totally surrounded,” he says. “I was in the flock. There were birds maybe a metre away from me, but they took no notice at all. The air was electric.”

When we picture budgies we tend to think not of wild birds but of captive companions. They are the world’s third most popular pet after dogs and cats, best known for chomping on cuttlefish ‘bones’, their cheeky, loquacious nature and their rhetorical enquiries, such as “Who’s a pretty boy then?”. But this highly social species is native to Australia, where it can be found flying wild and free across most of the continent.