Lorikeets

While visiting the Sandiego Wild Animal Park I missed the opportunity to photograph my grandson interacting with these colorful birds. I did manage to snap a few of these friendly creatures.
Shot with EF-s 17-85 IS and 420EX.

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Gorgeous colours.

There's a place in Queensland Australia called the Bunya Mountains. Very sceneic place. They have hundreds of Parrots similar to this that will roost on you while you hold feed in your hands. Makes for excellent photography. Unfortunately I nolong live in Queensland and I didn't have a decent camera to show them off when I did. Suffice it to say it was an amazing sight to see. Quite funny at times when people were not ready for it

Very pretty and colorful birds here, someones gandson looks scared to death of the bird on his head in the other shot also, Minor nit for me with any bird is wanting to see the birds tail in the image as posted here you give us 75% of the bird but cut off the tail I would have likes enough room at the bottom to see the tail or at least enough to room to allow us to imagine the tail was in the shot even if it couldn't be seen.

Thanks for commenting Peter. Yes they can really surprise someone that is not ready for them.
Sorry to dissapoint you Eric but the Lori's were perched on a rail that completely hid their tails.
Here is a photo that shows the whole rail but no tail. I don't think this one is as nice as the other two.

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The fact with photos is that if the bird has legs, and a tail you want to allow room for them otherwise the image looks cut off, A long legged bird shown cut off at the knees since that part is underwater looks wrong we need to be able to feel that if we could see the legs even under water there was room for them in the image, There are rules with photography that work and most often they are the best way to show the image, there are times when breaking the rules is fine. I have to say this image isn't as good of a shot but the room is there for the tail and that is make this one better on a technical basis.

Thanks Eric. I can visualize the difference. I'll try to keep that in mind when framing the subject.

These are beautiful birds!

They are just like the ones here at the Jacksonville Zoo:

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Super shots, Skip. Focus is really sharp, and the colors and DOF are very nice. I like the expressions as well.

Lovely captures, really sharp, nice DOF and such a beautiful colourful bird. GJ

Wow, love the colors. Very nice shots.

These guys are the clowns of the Parrot world, I used to breed them, We have plenty in our wattle trees at the moment, these are good shots but far too much colour,have never seen them like this , perhaps a little less saturation might help, EW.

Beautiful shots, Skip. I love the colors, the sharpenss, and the bokeh!

That is just how they came out of the camera and pretty much what they looked like. I cropped them only using Picasa2.
Correction. The second and third also had one sharpening pass.

That bird is a virtual rainbow. Very nice captures.

Thanks everyone for the kind words.
Airdale, I did some research and I believe that this breed of Lorikeets are known as 'Rainbow Lorikeets"