Sulawesi Hanging Parrot, Loriculus stigmatus in aviculture.


Description
Length 15cm. This means that this species is one of the larger hanging parrots.
The Blue-crowned Hanging Parrot, Loriculus galgulus, the most kept hanging parrot, is visibly smaller.
The colour of the bird is mainly green as you can see in the photograph. A mature male has a dark red forehead, crown, throat, shoulders and upper tail coverts. The green feathers are really shiny if the bird is in top condition. In the back of the neck or mantle we see a clearly visible red haze over the green. The iris of a mature male is yellowish white. The mandible is black and the legs are light pink. The female looks the same as the male however usually the red on the forehead and crown is missing. Also the colour of
the upper tail can be a bit duller and the iris is not yellow-white but grey-brown.
As mentioned before in other articles about Hanging Parrots, it might happen that when a female gets older, its colours can change into that of a male (even when she is only two years old). This means that the female gets a red forehead and crown similar to that of the male. However she keeps the original colour of the iris. This way we can still see the difference between the two sexes.

Young birds look like the female but the bill is still horn-coloured just after leaving the nest. Soon this colour will change into a black-brown basis. Later this will change into completely black. The forehead is green and the red parts like the upper tail coverts are dull-red. The throat is orange. The green is also duller compared with mature birds. The legs are dark grey-brown.

Contrary to what has been written in the past no subspecies are described.

Distribution
The Sulawesi Hanging Parrot occurs as the name suggests on Sulawesi (formerly called Celebes) and several smaller islands such as Bangka, Lembeh, Manterawu, Toigan, Muna and Butung. This Hanging Parrot lives there with another Hanging Parrot, the Green Hanging Parrot, Loriculus exilis, also called the little Sulawesi Hanging Parrot.

Status and habitat
Very common and widely distributed. Occurs in both lowland forests as well as in hill forests. They also occur in forest edges and lightly cultivated landscapes. We usually find them up to an altitude of 1000m but in south Sulawesi they are even found up till an altitude of 1640m.

Behaviour
In the wild this species is usually found solitarily or in pairs. They are rarely found in groups. This bird does not attract any attention because of its quiet behaviour. We usually see (or hear) the bird when it flies away. Most often they rest on the highest branches. They often visit flowering trees (they also eat little flowers) and certain fruit bearing trees. In some areas they show a nomadic behaviour.

Their display in aviculture is very interesting. The iris of the male is becoming very small during the display and the red upper tail coverts as well as the feathers on the throat are set up. The male flies away from the female and turns than immediately back to the place next to her. The male regularly tempts the female by offering her some food. This goes in the typical Hanging Parrot way. The food is regurgitated and the next moment the male brings its bill very close to the bill of the female. You see a thread of food connecting the two tips of the bills. The bills do not clench like we see with other parrots.

Propagation in the wild
In early February a nest with two young was found in south-east Sulawesi. The nest was about 4m from the ground in a broken tree-trunk standing in a clearing. During April to June birds have been recorded nesting in holes in very thick bamboo at the edges of village gardens. Often  the adults are captured on the nest and brought to the villages to be kept as pets.

Breeding experiences
I have bred this species for more than twelve years. I have had my ups and downs with this bird. Unfortunately the latter prevailed.
I bought my first four Sulawesi Hanging Parrots in 1988. All of them were young birds but the quality was that poor that they did not survive long.
The next year I was able to buy a couple more of these birds. However they were not much better than the first lot. They all had a serious worm infestation. In the end only one pair survived.

They were housed in a cage of 1.5 x 0,5 x 0,5m. At that time I still had wooden cages and they were not easy to clean. They had a nest box measuring 25cm long, 15cm high and 15cm wide. The entrance hole had a diameter of 4cm. In May 1990 the female showed interest in the nest box. It is different with Hanging Parrots than with lories. Lories use the nest box to sleep in while Hanging Parrots use the nest box when they are ready to breed.

It did not take long before the female started laying eggs. She laid three eggs. All three of them hatched after 20 days.
In the beginning I gave the young a 4mm ring. But I had some problems with this size ring. They were actually too small. Later I used 4,5mm rings. You can ring them at the age of  about 10 days. The first couple of days the young do not grow that fast but this is made up rapidly. You can almost see them grow. The parents feed the young extremely well. It is known that young Hanging Parrots in the nest have their crops so full that they nearly burst. From the age of three weeks the young had the tendency to make a mock attack when I wanted to clean the nest box. You have to do this very regularly. The young fledged when they were 5 weeks old. They fledged with only one day difference despite the difference of 5 days between hatching. Not all feathers just above the bill were fully grown. It is noticeable that the young are very shy, especially the first couple of weeks. The young went only back into the nest box in the first two nights.

What I have written above is my experience in recent years. Unfortunately I also had my share of  bad experiences.

The very first breeding result ended dramatically. As mentioned before, the young are very shy after fledging. The first young died shortly after I separated them from their parents. They were so shy that it would not surprise me at all if stress was the main course of their death. With this experience I let the young stay longer with their parents and after a while they become calmer.

Unfortunately the breeding female died a few months later. It was not before 1992 that the breeding results took a positive turn. In that year I bought two birds that were not fully coloured yet. Later they proved to be a pair.  In early 1993 the female started to inspect the nest box. Within a few weeks she produced three eggs. Of these three eggs two hatched of which one later died. The remaining young appeared to be a female. I lent this bird out to Heinz Lölfing in Germany. This female however died after six months. The next round gave me only one young that went the same way as the first one.
In the meantime Heinz was able to obtain a few Sulawesi's and I supplied him later with a few more. In 1995 I bred another six young. Some of them went to Loro Parque and two females went to England to form a pair with two males.
My breeding couple raised a total of nine young till I lost the male. In 1996 I was offered the opportunity to buy birds from a colleague breeder. I have then put three pairs together in an aviary of three metres long, one metre wide and two metres high. This was not really successful. The result was only a few young. In 1997 I decided to house them separately. At that time I had four pairs. However it did not look like that they wanted to start breeding. That year I only raised one young.
When I the opportunity to buy some young birds in 1998 I did so. I sold a couple of my existing pairs. In 1998 and 1999 three pairs regularly laid eggs. One pair just kept laying, sometimes I found 8-9 eggs in the nest box. They refused to incubate them. The other pairs kept laying infertile eggs or they damaged them.

I started the year 2000 with 4 pairs and two young females. Of one of my four pairs one female had a very swollen abdomen and she died in May 2000. I put one young female  with the male. One month later this female was getting interested in the nest box. The result was three eggs of which two hatched. They were raised successfully. When the young were 30 days old the female started laying again. The result was three eggs. The young of the first round had not even fledged. This situation was probably the reason that the first two eggs died off. The third egg hatched and was raised without a hitch. The two young were left with the parents, but the female eventually began to chase the young. This happened after the fertile egg hatched. After the last chick fledged the female immediately began a new clutch and chased the young bird. This young bird could only just feed itself. This time she had a clutch of four fertile eggs which were all hatched. The last chick died after five days.

The second pair also laid three eggs resulting in three young who fledged in the first week of November. A couple of weeks later she laid three fertile eggs. After they hatched I removed the original chicks away. However, they were not chased by the parents. In the meantime the female that kept laying eggs, improved her performance. Then she had four eggs of which two were fertile. Unfortunately they died but this gives some hope for the future. At the beginning of December she laid another clutch of three eggs, one of which hatched.

A fourth pair laid a clutch of three eggs in November, two were damaged and did not hatch. On 24 December 2000 she began another clutch of three eggs of which only one was fertile.  At the time of writing the results are unknown.

The food I give consists of Aves Lorinectar. To this I add broken hulled oats and pieces of apple sprinkled with Fruitmix. A ready mixed powder from Aves especially developed for fruit eating birds. Every now and than fresh branches is recommended. Also chicken weed is eaten by some birds but not by all of them.

I hope that the positive developments of this year will continue. I have decided to keep a number of young birds so I can hopefully build up a good breeding stock.

Literature
Forshaw, J.M. & Cooper, W.T. (1989); Parrots of the World, Landsdowne edition.

By : Jos Hubers, The Netherlands.