If you visit any of London’s parks including Regent’s Park, Primrose Hill, Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens then it’s likely that you will have spotted a pandemonium of bright green parrots squawking overhead.
These birds are ring-necked or rose-ringed parakeets and an urban myth has it that Jimi Hendrix is responsible for them living in the wild after he released a pair in Carnaby Street in the 1960s.
There are a number of other theories that explain how the population established itself:
In fact, ask any Londoner how parakeets ended up in the city and you’ll get a different answer every time.
Ring-necked parakeets are medium-sized parrots that are native to Africa and Asia. They inhabit dry, tropical countryside and the habitat of the Indian sub-species in the foothills of the Himalayas means they can readily adapt to cooler climates. Feral populations can be found across the world on five continents and in over 30 countries.
In the UK, they breed early in the year in holes in trees, and start nesting in January, well before most other species of birds who use the same nest sites. Their incubation period is just three weeks, and they can produce up to 3 broods a season. They eat a wide variety of food including seeds, grain, leaves, berries, and nuts, and will happily visit bird feeders in gardens.
All this meant the ring-necked parakeet was able to easily acclimatise and live and breed in the wild and it is now the UK’s most abundant naturalised parrot.
But even if Jimi Hendrix did contribute to the explosion in the population of ring-necked parakeets he certainly wasn’t the only person responsible.
Escaped parakeets have been living wild in the UK since the 19th century with the first recorded sightings in the 1860s. They were popular pets and would sometimes leave the confines of their cage to live a freer life in the British countryside. In the 1930s many were purposely released due a public health scare.
Psittacosis, known as parrot’s disease, was responsible for numerous human deaths and it was urged that imports of parrots should be stopped. Parrot owners, worried that their pet could infect them with the deadly disease, released the birds into the wild rather than arrange to have them destroyed. Other species of parrots would not have been able to survive in the UK’s relatively cold climate, but the ring-necked parakeet thrived.
Despite the risk, caged birds remained popular, and in the 1960s there were more pet birds than cats and dogs. As numbers increased so did escapees and from the 1970s the feral population exploded with the current population standing at about 12,000 breeding pairs. Estimates put the total number much higher at 50,000 birds.
Ring-necked parakeets are found mainly in parks and orchards in south-east England, particularly London, Surrey, Kent and Sussex, but they have been spotted as far north as Manchester, and will venture into people’s gardens, particularly during the winter.
Officially, ring-necked parakeets are considered a pest along with other non-native birds including the monk parakeet and the Canada goose, as well as some native species including jackdaws, crows, and wood pigeons.
This doesn’t mean it’s open season on ring-necked parakeets. They may only legally be killed under General Licence, to prevent serious damage to agricultural crops.
It is not currently considered necessary to cull them either. However, as their numbers increase, they may start to cause problems for native birds, in particular woodpeckers, starlings, owls, and nuthatches, who they compete with for nesting holes, so conservationists are keeping a close eye on them.
Ring-necked parakeets are not the only species of parrot that have adapted to living in non-native environments. Feral colonies of rainbow lorikeets have been established in Australia and New Zealand, there is a breeding population of blue-and-yellow macaws in Florida, and a flock of red-masked parakeets have set up home in San Francisco and were the subject of a 2003 documentary, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.
One Response
When I was a child our neighbours had some parrots that used to fly in their house and sometimes in the garden in the summer. One day some of them escaped and they never found them. Many years later when I saw parrots living in London I wondered if they were my neighbours parrots. alhtough I don’t know how long they live for. Reading your article I now wonder if perhaps they were.