Parakeets: pretty pests posing problems
When I was a child, visiting London involved feeding pigeons from your hand in Trafalgar Square, flocks of them, just like in Home Alone 2. However, it’s been banned now and would cost you more to the tune of a £500 fine than tuppence. The lure of being close to wild birds is still there though, it’s just transferred to a different park and subject, now the tourists head to Kensington Gardens in the hope of finding green parakeets.
Jimi Hendrix may not be the reason there are so many parakeets in London, (50,000 of them in fact) but wouldn’t it be a wonderful story if he was? Picture it, Hendrix, in all his finery, swaggering down Carnaby Street, a cage containing a pair of Parakeets under one arm, humming to himself, “Actin' funny but I don't know why, 'scuse me while I kiss the sky” and deciding to free his feathered friends.
But, Hendrix may or may not have done this in the 1960s, and before that, in 1932, the Middlesex County Times had already reported parakeet sightings in Epping Forest. The paper speculated that the "parrot disease scare" of 1931 had galavanised people into releasing their pets. In fact, Psittacosis, contagious among birds and transmissible to humans as a form of pneumonia, is probably where the term “sick as a parrot” originates from.
Even though parakeets aren’t native to Europe, they have now made it their home and can be found in many countries across the continent. London, however, seems to have really captured their hearts, for both positive and negative reasons the Big Smoke is now a parakeet’s playground. Temperatures have risen considerably in the capital in the last 100 years, London may be up to ten degrees warmer than other British cities; Simultaneously, it is one of the greenest cities in the world boasting 8 million trees, covering 21% of the capital's total land area.
Whether wild or captive, parakeets live well among us. They have long held an appeal as a pet, perhaps in part because they are small in comparison to many in the parrot world, but it’s most likely because even when kept with companions (which is preferable) they will allow a human to become part of their ‘flock’ (which in the wild may be 100 birds strong). They can also learn to speak between 600 - 800 words, while other breeds may learn only half that. Parakeets copy mundane household sounds like that of the microwave and telephone and incorporate them into their chatter, providing a background orchestra to daily life.
It is rose-ringed parakeets we spy in the UK, they are an average of 40cm long and, like a lot of birds, are sexually dimorphic; adult males have a red and black neck ring, females have either no neck rings, or barely-there shadow-like grey neck rings.
It would be a lie to say that there aren’t concerns about the flashy incomers, they are classed as an “invasive” species after all, and the RSPB warns that they compete for nest holes with native birds like woodpeckers, starlings and nuthatches. But, as a host for a Ukrainian refugee, I cannot help but view the parakeets as a hopeful example of just how many environments we can thrive in, when made welcome.
As ever though, there is tension around how incomers impact the status quo, Natural England added the ring-necked parakeet to their general licence, allowing it to be shot if meeting the “serious damage purposes” in relation to crops, fruit and vegetables - Previously, special permission would have needed to be granted to target this species. It’s specified that any of the following methods are authorised to target the birds listed on the general license:
prick eggs
oil eggs
destroy eggs and nests
kill or take by hand
use targeted falconry
shoot with any firearm, including ‘semi-automatic weapons’, shotguns or air guns
trap with a ‘permitted cage trap design’
take birds whilst not in flight with any hand-held or hand-propelled net
I can’t say I’m comfortable with this list, I always come back to the same argument… It’s not their fault, it’s ours, why should they pay the price?
But, it’s compelling to consider that The United Nations Convention on Biodiversity has concluded that one of the top 5 major threats to global biodiversity, thus requiring urgent coordinated action to address, is “invasive species: Non-native species introduced by human activities can outcompete, prey on, or bring diseases to native species, leading to declines or extinctions of native populations”. The other 4 being:
Habitat Loss and Degradation.
Overexploitation: Overexploitation affects 277 species through excessive hunting and 217 species through overfishing and resource extraction.
Climate Change
Pollution: Pollution affects freshwater and marine ecosystems, with plastics impacting marine life and chemicals reducing insect populations critical for pollination and other ecosystem services.
When faced with the list, I still find myself gravitating towards tackling the issues that do not involve selectively culling invasive species. The parakeet might be competing for nest sites, but the native species they are displacing are also under threat because soil degradation dramatically impacts the availability of insects for them to feed on - this is a human error, something we can rectify in our own gardens. I find it more empowering to view it this way, as we don’t need to wait for regulations and research finding, we can take immediate and positive action - compassionate conservation.
Overall, the emotive response, on both sides, to the presence of parakeets in the UK reflects back our discomfort at the infrastructure by which our country governs; as we further reconcile a coloniser past and deepen out understanding of the nuances of diversity and inclusion, the way we view and mythologise the arrival of this bird is telling.
