How to Identify Swift Parrot Feathers

What Swift Parrot's Feathers Look Like

Swift Parrot is a small, slender, fast-flying parrot from Tasmania, and its silhouette and feathers are noticeably different from typical stocky parrots. Body contour feathers are a bright grass-green, brighter and more saturated on the back than the slightly yellower-green underparts. The face and throat show a striking crimson-red patch extending from the forehead down around the chin and throat, bordered above by a small patch of deep blue on the crown, both diagnostic colors not seen together in this combination on other Australian parrots. Under the wing, this species shows a bright red patch at the bend of the wing and red under the wing coverts, visible as solid crimson feathers if the underwing is examined. The tail is unusually long, narrow, and pointed for a parrot — most parrots have broader, more squared tail feathers, but Swift Parrot's tail feathers taper to points, contributing to its swift-like, streamlined flight silhouette (hence the name). Tail feathers are mostly a dull maroon-red on the underside with green on top. Flight feathers are deep blue-green, darker than the body.

Step-by-Step: Is This Feather From a Swift Parrot?

• Check for the red face/throat combined with a small blue crown patch. This specific color combination is distinctive among Australian parrots.
• Look at tail feather shape. Narrow, tapering, pointed tail feathers (rather than broad, rounded ones) fit this species' unusually streamlined profile.
• Check under-wing coverts for red. A small, solid crimson feather from the wing's leading edge or underwing supports Swift Parrot over similar green lorikeets.
• Assess overall size. Feathers should be consistent with a small parrot, notably slender-bodied rather than compact.
• Consider range and season. Found in Tasmania during breeding months, or in mainland southeastern Australian forests (especially box-ironbark woodland) in the nonbreeding season, strongly supports this identification.

Similar Species & How to Tell Them Apart

Musk Lorikeet, which can share flowering eucalypt habitat on the mainland, has red confined to a smaller patch around the eye and lacks the extensive red throat and chin of Swift Parrot, plus its tail is shorter and more rounded rather than sharply pointed. Superb Parrot, found in similar mainland woodland, has a yellow face rather than red, with a red band only across the upper breast, and a broader, blunter tail typical of most parrots — very different from Swift Parrot's swift-like tapered tail. Orange-bellied Parrot, another critically endangered Tasmanian migrant sometimes found in the same coastal habitats, lacks red facial markings altogether and shows a distinctive orange belly patch instead.

Where & When You'll Find Them

Swift Parrots breed in Tasmania, where they depend heavily on flowering Tasmanian blue gum and black gum eucalypts, nesting in tree hollows in a small and shrinking range of forest. After breeding, the entire population migrates across Bass Strait to spend the nonbreeding season in box-ironbark and other eucalypt woodlands of southeastern mainland Australia, following unpredictable flowering events. Feathers are most likely to be found near flowering eucalypt stands in Tasmania during spring and summer, and in mainland woodland foraging areas during the autumn and winter nonbreeding period; because this is a critically endangered species with a small population, any feather find is a comparatively rare event.