London is known for a lot of things — art, music, Charles Dickens, the sun never coming out. But did you know that the city is dealing with a feral parakeet problem? One that is becoming more and more visible?
According to the CBC, the ring-necked parakeet population is spreading throughout London. The British government estimates that there are around 8,600 ring-necked parakeet breeding pairs in the country.
This species is considered an invasive one, and there’s a lot of speculation as to how they got let out into the wild. Some say it happened after the London Zoo was bombed during World War II and another ties it to the movie The African Queen. There’s also a theory that puts the blame on Jimi Hendrix’ shoulders for their introduction. The guitar God is rumored to have released a pair of parakeets on a London street in the 1960s. How do you trace this influx to two birds from more than 50 years ago?
British GQ found an expert to speculate on how Hendrix’s birds could’ve contributed to the parrots’ invasion:
“Jimi Hendrix was supposed to have released the birds in the Sixties on Carnaby Street, and the first recorded breeding success was in Kent, in about 1969. They weren’t recorded breeding in London until about 1973, but they are quite long-lived birds and they don’t start breeding typically until their third year.” So considering that Hendrix’ birds almost certainly took to British skies between 1966 and 1970, it’s plausible that this breeding pair contributed to establishing the breeding population.
Originally intended as pets, the ring-necked parakeet is known to adapt to new environments in the wild. They also breed like crazy — to the point where bird watchers are worried that these wild parakeets will challenge the native species, cutting into available resources.
As for what the government plans to do about this, that’s unclear. Maybe they’ll decide that the reported damage done to crops by their presence warrants an effort to capture these parakeets and bring them to tropical forests in places like Brazil, like the UK government did with monk parakeets, bringing their number down to 50 in 2014. Or maybe they’ll do nothing. The parakeets have been around for a quite a while and they haven’t caused that much harm. Also, they sure look cute using the bird feeder in people’s gardens.
(via CBC)
