The scaly-breasted lorikeet is Australia’s second-largest species of lorikeet, behind the rainbow lorikeet. Instead of the rainbows’ gaudy colouration, scaly-breasted lorikeets are mostly emerald-green, with yellow scalloping on the front (the ‘scales’) and a coral-pink bill. Like other lorikeets, they almost exclusively eat nectar which is usually gathered from the flowers of eucalypts, banksias, paperbarks and other native trees and shrubs. These lorikeets often associate with other species of nectar-eating birds, especially rainbow lorikeets, and they are often seen squabbling noisily with them in the canopy of flowering trees.