Posted on 06/14/2023 1:29:56 PM PDT by FarCenter
At Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery the living get as much attention as the dead. Groundskeepers maintain the 478-acre historic landmark as an arboretum and habitat for more than 200 breeding and migratory bird species. But many visiting wildlife lovers aren't interested in those native birds. They're at the entryway, their binoculars trained on the spire atop its Gothic Revival arches. They've come to see the parrots.
The urban cemetery hosts dozens of long-tailed, dove-size parrots, lime green with gray accents on their foreheads and chests, called Monk Parakeets. (Parrots and parakeets are part of the same family.) These birds maintain barrel-size stick nests not just at this cemetery but across the city. They live in nearby Connecticut, too. Monk Parakeets and other species of parrots are in Chicago, Miami, Tampa, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin. Red-masked Parakeets live on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. Rosy-faced Lovebirds decorate the palm trees of Phoenix. Parrots are present in all of Mexico's 10 largest cities, as well as Barcelona, Amsterdam, Brussels, Rome and Athens. They're in Tel Aviv. And Singapore. All around the world, parrots are taking over with a resounding SQUAWK!!!
Today at least 60 of the world's 380 or so parrot species have a breeding population in a country outside their natural geographical range. Each successful transplant has its own story: some are benign, others a threat to the local wildlife; some are abundant in their home ranges, whereas others rely on cities as a refuge from extinction. All are by-products of the pet trade and animal trafficking around the world. Because they're parrots, they're smart, adaptable, creative and loud. “They're animals that are really social, and they live in cognitively complex social environments,” says Grace Smith-Vidaurre, a postdoctoral fellow at the Rockefeller University and the University of Cincinnati, who studies the birds. “They're like humans in a lot of ways.”
I thought by the headline this was just another critique of the media.
I see giant flocks of them every time I turn on CBS, NBS, ABS news
I love parrots but they are loud. I had three when I lived in Miami and a love bird. They are great pets.
They look like green cheek conures.
ROFLOL~~~~~~~ You got that right!!!!@
Reminds me of a joke Reagan told about the Russian who had a parrot. When the KGB came to his door, the man said, "I just want you to know, I don't agree with a word that parrot says." LOL
I think the populations of feral parrots actually come from decades of escapes (or what people have claimed were escapes).
They’re all over the US, and London has many very tame ones in the various parks:
https://news.uchicago.edu/story/escaped-pet-parrots-are-now-naturalized-23-us-states-study-finds
We had those in my old neighborhood in Chicago. They built a huge nest —as big as a man —out of sticks on a utility pole, and it had little “apartments” inside. They were interesting, but we had one little problem: they liked to pick pears off our tree, take a few nibbles, and drop them. We kept busy cleaning up after them.
There I was in the Gran Chaco. It was sunset and a flock of hundreds of parrots were screeching in two trees nearby. The noise was darn near deafening. Then, the sun set. And on cue, the birds stopped their noise. It happened instantaneously, just as though I had turned off a switch. It was time to go to sleep, obviously.
After my Grandpa died, my Grandma bought a parrot for company. “Peety”. As I grew up I saw how smart he really was. He knew the patterns of how the day played out. He knew the regular people in the house. He would be let out of his cage and follow you around because he was interested in what you were doing. When he was hungry we had taught him to say “more food”, and he would say that. He was very social. You know when you have a really smart and trained dog - he was at that level. Little guy lived a little over 18 years.
Beautiful plumage.
And now it’s time for a parrot joke.
A man buys a talking parrot, and later finds out that the parrot swears constantly. Nothing but filthy language, all the time. The man tries everything to get the parrot to clean up his language. He tries to reason with the parrot. He tries to bribe the parrot. Nothing works.
Finally the man loses control, and shoves the parrot into a freezer. A minute later the man opens the freezer door, and the parrot hops out.
“I promise to never use bad language again,” the shaken parrot says. “But I have one question. What did that chicken do?”
Oh, I thought this was about the MSM.
And they’re worried about AI when they should be worried about PI...
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