We've always had a few parrots around here, but usually only in ones and twos. Yesterday, though, we had a whole tree full of them making a huge racket. I went out near sunset to take pictures and got a shot of this parrot, who seems like a very happy parrot. We need more happy parrots, I think.
We get a large group (10-20) of parakeets (I think) that will fly in to the palm tree right outside our place at the same time every day and make a huge racket for 5-10 minutes and then just fly away again. They will do this for weeks at a time and then disappear for weeks or months only to return eventually. I assume they're escaped pets that have thrived in the LA ecosystem and not indigenous to the area.
Sounds like the Pasadena parrots.
Yep, that's them! Glad we haven't even experienced their 6 am pandemoniums.
And they've stripped all the leaves off that tree just because they can.
It looks like a Red-crowned Amazon (Amazona viridigenalis), although with more bare skin around the eye than is typical. Native to a small area of east-central Mexico (possibly historically extending up into southernmost Texas, but no one is really sure about that), it is endangered in the wild. There are probably more of them, all descendants of released cage birds, in the Los Angeles area than in their native range.
I've seen them in both southern California and the Lower Rio Grande Valley, but not in Mexico (even though I've been to the area where they're supposedly present several times).
Wow, that guy looks kind of ratty. Discolored, ragged feathers, mottled beak. Maybe you should put out food. Probably not crackers.
Okay, I guess -- but nothing compared to their Aussie cockatoo cousins who have figured out how to open trash bins to help themselves to snacks.
Saw a big green long tailed one flying over 280 on the after work drive home some time in the mid to late 1980's. Several blackbirds were harassing it. There are flocks of them in the Palo Alto area. They are easy to train as economists. They quickly learn to repeat "supply and demand".
Happy parrots are all alike; every unhappy parrot is unhappy in its own way.
Only if those additional feral parrots are fodder for the feral cats…
There is a flock of lorikeets which fly around Sunnyvale. They never shut up.
Just because it’s cute doesn’t mean it isn’t feral/invasive…
In Hawaii, people released their pet rose-ringed parakeets. Now, they're a nuisance, crowding out native birds and destroying $millions in crops, devastating small ag owners.
Same story with the accidental introduction of tilapia to Hawaii, which is now so pervasive that most bodies of brackish water contain them.
Looking up and seeing the outline of a parrot flying is both beautiful and....just wrong. At least in the US.
Not quite. There have been three, and possibly four, species of parrot native to the US:
The Carolina Parakeet was widespread across the southeastern US until it was wiped out in the late 19th Century.
The Thick-billed Parrot was formerly present in the mountains of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico, and may have ranged as far north as southern Utah. Its range has receded and the bird is now present only in Mexico. Attempts to reintroduce it in the US have not been successful.
The Green Parakeet is present in small numbers in southernmost Texas. You can see flocks of them in and around Brownsville, although these flocks seem to be composed of a mix of wild birds and escaped/released cage birds.
As I mentioned above, the Red-crowned Amazon may have been native to south Texas as well, but no one is really sure.
at least in the northern US
😉
Even Germany has areas with fairly large populations of parrots which live in the wild, apparently descended from birds that escaped or were set free. Cologne and Stuttgart are two cities of which I know where they are a fairly common sight.
If the parrots are coming -- and you value peace and quiet -- you may want to put your home on the market now.