…and a goofy bonus bird :)
Wow, those parakeets get everywhere! How far North in Europe are you? We get them occasionally in East Anglia but with greater frequency. In London I can show you dozens in some of the parks. They have even been seen as far North as Durham.
Lovely photos by the way 👍
I am in Düsseldorf, which i think is pretty much the northern border for the parakeets along the rhine for now.
Rumor says that 50 years ago about 20 of them escaped from an aviary in cologne and they spread out to the cities along the rhine around cologne. There’s about 220 breeding couples in and around my city (2016 data). They are all indian Rose-ringed parakeets.
That’s really interesting, thanks Drempels.
London is 51.5° North and Düsseldorf is 51.2° so basically the same, but your winters are a lot colder than ours I imagine, meaning our parakeets can live in places further North, like Durham.
There are many rumours about how they got loose in the UK. One is a music video/film with Jimmy Hendrix at Elstree studios in Borehamwood where they were released as part of the production. There are quite a lot of them in that area so it may be true 🫨
Winters are a lot milder here than they used to be, although if they’ve been around for 50 years their ancestor made it through colder winters than i have seen i guess. Interesting that they seem to be the same kind of parakeets in London!
I feel like the population grew a lot this century, like @[email protected] said, they surely weren’t as present when i moved here. Then again from what i read, the population is only slightly growing.
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I have also seen two species of them in Rome, the rose-ringed and the monks (of which I have some poor quality photos) Climate wise, this is probably less surprising than northern Europe.
Exotic bird markets have long been a thing, so it may be that there have been many small introductions over the last millennia and perhaps further back, I found some references to Ancient Rome. Perhaps only more lately with warmer winters they have been able to establish proper breeding colonies. As an indicator species their movements might be quite telling.
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New Orleans, I bet you get some amazing wildlife in the bayou?
Wow, Chicago and NY, they are obviously far more cold tolerant than I gave them credit for. I’m expecting someone from Alaska along soon!
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Awesome! I love the fact that someone has taken the time to write this history and that the Hendrix mythology has made it into the book. Thanks for letting us know this exists 😀
Is that a bird feeder made from an old desk lamp?
Yes. A parakeet is hanging on it as i type :)
So cool! Did you make it yourself?
Yes. I had this lamp lying around for years with the idea to fix it, but never got around to it. Then when i wanted to install a feeder on the balcony i thought this was perfect, because i wanted something to angle off the balcony.
I have repositioned the lamp now to the very edge of the balcony, because i was worried that a pigeon will get stuck somewhere in the mechanics of the lamp, they were stepping really clumsily onto the bottom arm, sliding down when they were trying to walk across the balcony railing. I am quite certain it would have only been a matter of time until a pigeon got hurt there.
I love the lamp, but the tits only grab something and then they’re off. I used to have set it up a bit different and it attracted more birds, finches etc, but it was too easy for the parakeets to get to it and they’d just empty it all. Now they hang onto it only for a couple minutes and also only one of them can hang there at a time.
I have made another feeder too, but only blue tits use it, great tits go for the lamp. But it’s nicer for watching since they stay for longer. I will try to make a different variation of it to maybe get some finches in there too:
Oh and these “tit balls” are also great for watching, also only blue tits though.
Love it! Good for you for making something different for the birds to enjoy!
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