Pesky Migrants
One
morning at the tail end of the UK’s first
coronavirus lockdown in June 2020, Joe Eckersley
was startled by a screech from above while on
his walk to work in Leeds, a former industrial
city in northern England. He looked up and did a
double take: Sitting in a tree was a ring-necked
parakeet, its bright green feathers blending
into the early summer foliage. Eckersley, an
enthusiastic birdwatcher, ran straight back home
to grab his camera.
More
of the parakeets soon started popping up and,
over the coming months, Eckersley trekked to the
local park where they had settled almost every
other day, joined by a growing group of fellow
enthusiasts. “Every couple of weeks, the numbers
just started doubling,” he says, still audibly
thrilled three years later. “When it got towards
November, we were up to 18 parakeets in the
park. Then they started roosting.”
Ring-necked
or rose-ringed parakeets — named for the pink
and black ring that frames the head of male
birds — are native to parts of Asia and
sub-Saharan Africa. They have long colonized
cities across Europe, from Amsterdam to
Barcelona, but the largest population by far can
be found in Britain: Estimates now put the
number of breeding parakeets in the country well
above 30,000, a more than twentyfold increase
since the mid-1990s. “They’re doing
exceptionally well outside of their native
range. They’re all over the place,” says Hazel
Jackson, who wrote her PhD on the genetics of
ring-necked parakeets and found that most of
Britain’s parakeets can trace their origin to
Pakistan and northern India.
UK-based journalist Yannic Rack
writes about how London’s parakeet population
has recently been expanding northward, and why,
despite enthusiasm among birders, not everyone
is happy about it.
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