Last Updated on by Mitch Rezman
First things first – Lorys have a shorter tail and are bigger than Lorikeets, and Lorikeets have longer tails. Windy City Parrot classifies lorikeets and lorries as medium-sized birds. The most popular species of Lorys are the Blue-streaked Lory, the Chattering Lory, the Dusky Lory, the Rainbow Lory, the Green Naped Lorikeet, the Blue Lorikeet, the Red Collared Lorikeet, the Perfect Lorikeet, and the Black-Winged Lorikeet.
Lorikeet’s wings taper and their tails are pointed which allows them to fly quite easily and with great agility. Because they have strong feet and legs, they are very active birds and clown-like in nature.
Although they vary in size, to get a sense of how big the bird is – a Rainbow Lorikeet is about 14 inches long and weighs about 5 ounces ( about 133 g). If you’re interested in knowing about all the species of lorikeets we’ve listed them below with links to Wikipedia.
Lorys are also referred to as brush tongue parrots because of the extendable bristles on their tongues. Although they can eat certain seeds and specialized pellets they really like flower nectar and pollen, and grubs and worms if you like digging in your yard. In the wild, they can feed on the flowers and something like 5000 different plants using their tongues to extract nectar.
It’s best to feed lorries and lorikeets a nectar replacement diet which makes them candidates for people who have been involved with birds for a while. Fresh vegetables like spinach, which provide calcium should be introduced on a regular basis. They like lots of fruit like pears, apples, corn on the cob berries and grapes ( easy on the grapes because of the high iron content which can cause liver damage), pumpkin, sweet potatoes, and citrus fruits once a week. They just love honey which can be used as a treat or as a reward used for training.
Because Lorries eat primarily a liquid diet their poop tends to be runnier but most birds so they are messy – we actually refer to them as squirters. This means that you should protect the walls and surroundings of your Lorikeets birdcage. Once again we don’t recommend lorries as your first bird.
Rainbow lorikeets look very similar to the Eastern Rosella but Lorikeets have a blue head. In general, because of their specialized nutritional needs, it’s best not to mix Lorikeets with other species of birds. Lorries are very sociable and will readily accept food or liquids from strangers and they can nip you if they get a bit excited.
Because lorikeets are high-energy birds, they require bigger cages, at the very least 30″ x 20″ and a play top cage is recommended so they have a place to play when outside of the cage.
If you want to know the difference between softbills – hardbills – waxbills and hookbills, read this.
Until next time
Catherine Tobsing
President, Windy City Parrot, Inc
