The great green expansion: how ring-necked parakeets took over London

Cities

Was Jimi Hendrix responsible for the bright-green tropical birds’ presence in the capital? Or was it Katharine Hepburn?

Nick Hunt

Thu 6 Jun 2019 07.30 BSTLast modified on Thu 6 Jun 2019 07.32 BST

Electric Ladyland wasn’t the only thing Jimi Hendrix released in 1968. One day in that tumultuous year he left his flat on Brook Street, Mayfair, and strolled down nearby Carnaby Street with a birdcage in his hands. I like to think that he was dressed in a tasselled jacket and flares, his favourite Fender Stratocaster slung across his back. Or perhaps he travelled incognito, in a trenchcoat and dark glasses. Either way, somewhere on that street, the heart of Swinging London at the height of peace and love, he opened the door of the cage and unleashed two bright green birds: Adam and Eve, a breeding pair of ring-necked parakeets.

As they vanished, a flash of tropical colour against the grey sky, passersby merely shrugged: just more hippy weirdness. Was it a psychedelic stunt? A symbolic gesture of freedom? The result of a week-long drugs bacchanal? No one really knows. What we do know is that this incident is the indisputable origin of London’s population of feral parakeets, which now number in the tens of thousands and have spread from Hounslow to Haringey, Croydon to Crouch End.

Unless that story is not true, and actually London’s parakeets arrived in 1951 with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. The Hollywood stars were in town filming The African Queen at Isleworth Studios (or Shepperton Studios, depending on who you ask). A romantic adventure set in the equatorial swamps of east Africa, the film required exotic extras, so a flock of ring-necked parakeets was unwisely brought on set. Whether these resourceful birds escaped before, during or after filming has not been definitively established – they certainly don’t appear in the film, which I have watched frame by frame – but what lies beyond all reasonable doubt is that these cinematic escapees were the progenitors of today’s population.

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London's Parakeets: Everything You Need To Know – via Mark Raines

BY M@LAST EDITED 10 MONTHS AGO

 Are there really wild parakeets in London?

Yes, thousands of them. Long-term Londoners will be well aware, but newcomers are often taken by surprise by the flash of green and exotic squawk. You never forget your first parakeet moment.

What are they?

Parakeets come in lots of flavours, but London's are called ring-necked parakeets (sometimes rose-ringed parakeets). More specifically, it is the Indian subspecies of this bird (Psittacula krameri manillensis).

How do I identify them?

It's easy. They are the only large green birds in the kingdom. And they shriek like throttled muppets.

Where can I see them?

Almost anywhere in Greater London. The screeching invaders were once to be found only to the south of the city — places like Kew and Richmond Park. They've since spread all over the capital and out into the Home Counties. A bit like Franco Manca Pizza.

Read on

Organisers are forced to cancel event which offered visitors the chance to ice skate alongside live penguins after uproar from TV vet, actor and animal rights activists

Animal rights activists urged the venue to cancel the event next Saturday  

PETA had sent a detailed letter to event organisers asking them to stop it

A petition had also been launched in order to persuade organisers to pull it 

By TERRI-ANN WILLIAMS FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 19:02, 12 January 2019 | UPDATED: 00:54, 13 January 2019

Organisers of an event which offered visitors the chance to skate alongside penguins have been forced to cancel after uproar from animal rights groups.

Londoners would have had the opportunity to share an ice rink with five Humboldt penguins at the Queens Skate Dine Bowl, in West London.  

The cute animals were set to waddle onto the rink, based near Bayswater station on Saturday January 19, however the event has now been pulled after groups such as PETA and Humane Society International called for the event to be cancelled, as well as swimmer Lewis Pugh and TV vet Marc Abrahams.

PETA said that the penguins would 'experience stress' due to the amount of humans that would have been present at the event.

The birds would have been enclosed in their own purpose built pen where a hip height barrier was to separate them from the other skaters.

Guests were told they had the chance to come face to face with the penguins between 4-8pm, with it being just adults after 7pm. All profits from the event were set to go towards BirdLife international, a bird conservation charity and the skate sessions were in aid of Penguin Awareness Day.

Lewis Pugh, who is a swimmer and ocean advocate had tweeted: 'This is terrible idea. What an inappropriate way to mark #PenguinAppreciationDay'. This is while Marc Abraham urged people to sign a petition to get the event cancelled.

The venue said: 'Penguin Awareness Day at QUEENS has been cancelled. The event was intended as a non-profit, educational & accessible experience to increase awareness and education about this beloved engaged sea-bird, with monies to be raised for BirdLife International. 'Sadly due to the concerns raised by various animal protection groups including PETA & Freedom for Animals – we have had to cancel the event in the interest of the penguins & our guests.' 

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Ed note: I should think so too. Appalling idea.

City Council looks to make London more bird-friendly

April 4, 2018 4:00 pm

Updated: April 4, 2018 4:35 pm

By Christian D’Avino Reporter  980 CFPL

High-rise buildings in the Forest City could become more bird-friendly in the future.

A report presented to a London City Council committee on Tuesday evening pledges to make London’s high-rises both safer for birds and more energy efficient.

“What we are seeing from the data regarding bird-related deaths, many of them are getting confused in flight when faced with tall high-rise-type buildings,” said member of the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority board, Sandy Levin.

“Birds are often attracted to lights or believe a tree’s reflection in a glass window is the real thing,” he said.

The report looks to borrow from similar policies in cities such as Toronto, Markham, and Calgary.

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London and the south east is the new frontier for new bird species

5 Dec 2017 6:00 AM

London and the south east of England are on the front line of climate change in the UK, with the region’s birds already reacting to an apparent one degree rise in average summer temperatures since the 1980’s.

Most species are moving north to remain in their comfort zone, meaning some European species, like the hoopoe, little bittern and zitting cisticola are likely to become resident in the not too distant future.

My daughter thinks the zitting cisticola sounds like an unpleasant disease, but it’s a small warbler, which builds nests like cups in long grass, mostly near water. It makes a sound like the snipping of scissors. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before we get records of breeding zitting cisticola’s in wet grasslands along the Thames Estuary!

The findings are from the latest analysis of bird surveys and monitoring data called the State of the UK’s Birds (SUKB). It’s produced by a coalition of three NGOs: the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT), together with the UK’s statutory nature conservation bodies: Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs Northern Ireland (DAERA), the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), Natural England (NE) and Natural Resources Wales (NRW). That’s enough of the acronyms (8 AMBAR*).

Read more at 

'Rock star' Archaeopteryx fossil heads for Japan

Jonathan Amos Science correspondent

8 March 2017

One of the true "rock stars" of the fossil world is going on tour for the first time. 

London's Natural History Museum has sent its specimen of Archaeopteryx - the so-called "first bird" - to Japan.

It is travelling in Asia with nearly 300 other treasures from the South Kensington institution's collections. 

The limestone slabs that contain the bones of this pivotal creature on the evolutionary line from dinosaurs to birds are considered priceless. 

They are also very delicate. But museum officials are satisfied the iconic fossil will come to no harm.

"The scary thing is that it contains parts that are only one or two millimetres in depth, and so for me going to Tokyo with it is a bit challenging," concedes Lorraine Cornish, the head of conservation at the NHM.

"But we're doing some exciting touring exhibitions - putting ourselves out there to promote our collections. And if you're going to do an exhibition about the 'treasures of the Natural History Museum' then you kind of have to include this fossil because it really is a treasure."

Purchased in 1863 for £700 from Germany, where it was unearthed, the fossil was kept initially at the British Museum before being moved to the NHM when it opened in 1881. It has not been out of the building since - until now.

The fossil is referred to by experts simply as the "London Specimen".

Read on 

London’s garden birds disappearing?

Birdwatch News Archive

Posted on: 26 May 2016

Results from the Big Garden Birdwatch suggest a decrease in numbers of garden birds in London, and the RSPB has commissioned special nest boxes to highlight this decline.

London’s most common garden birds seem to be quietly vanishing from the city's green spaces, and research has revealed that Starlings (down 34 per cent), Blackbirds (19 per cent), Blue Tits (14 per cent) and House Sparrows (13 per cent) have disappeared from its gardens over the past 12 years. This data on declining species has been taken from the RSPB’s 2016 Big Garden Birdwatch, the largest citizen science survey in Britain, and was collated and analysed by the RSPB’s Centre for Conservation Science.

There does indeed seem to be a general trend of decline, though this may be exaggerated this year by the effects of a very mild winter, which has seen many species foraging away from gardens, and an increase in the numbers of Goldfinches and Long-tailed Tits.

To highlight this decline and encourage Londoners to attract the missing birds back to the city, East Village – which has the recently created postcode E20 – has enlisted local Essex carpenter Pete Bagg to create a number of unique nest boxes in the form of iconic buildings of the London Skyline. These include historic buildings such as Buckingham Palace and Tower Bridge, along with to E20’s very own Arcelor Mittal Orbit and Lee Valley Velodrome. E20 has hosted breeding Black Redstarts in recent years. East Village is the former London 2012 Athletes’ Village and represents a green haven in the heart of one of the world’s largest cities.

Neil Young, CEO of Get Living London which rents and manages homes at East Village, said: “As one of London’s greenest neighbourhoods with a big emphasis on the natural environment, East Village has invested heavily to encourage wildlife. Whether it be through ‘living roofs’ on each apartment building, the 3,000 trees – newly planted in 2011 – or [providing] 25 acres of green open space, we have worked hard to make East Village eco-friendly. With the six-acre Wetlands – a brilliant habitat for native biodiversity – we are delighted to partner with the RSPB to create these unique bird boxes to help encourage even more birds into the neighbourhood.”

The quirky bird boxes will go on show outside Get Living London’s East Village ‘Welcome Office’ from 26th May and will eventually be placed around London’s newest neighbourhood in time for next year's breeding season. The scheme has been introduced this spring as a 'call to action' for the nation to play their part to encourage birdlife wherever they live in the UK.

Read more …

Pigeon patrol takes flight to tackle London's air pollution crisis

Flock of racing pigeons equipped with pollution sensor and Twitter account take to the skies in bid to raise awareness of capital’s illegally dirty air

Adam Vaughan

Monday 14 March 2016 15.38 GMT

Last modified on Thursday 17 March 201612.26 GMT

They’ve been driven from Trafalgar square for being a nuisance, derided as rats with wings and maligned as a risk to public health.

But now pigeons could play a small part in helping Londoners overcome one of the capital’s biggest health problems – its illegal levels of air pollution blamed for thousands of deaths a year.

On Monday, a flock of half a dozen racing pigeons were set loose from a rooftop in Brick Lane by pigeon fancier, Brian Woodhouse, with one strapped with a pollution sensor to its back and one with a GPS tracker.

But while the 25g sensor records the nitrogen dioxide produced by the city’s diesel cars, buses, and trucks and tweets it at anyone who asks for a reading, its real purpose – and the use of the pigeons – is to raise awareness.

“It is a scandal. It is a health and environmental scandal for humans – and pigeons. We’re making the invisible visible,” said Pierre Duquesnoy, who won a London Design Festival award for the idea last year.

“Most of the time when we talk about pollution people think about Beijing or other places, but there are some days in the year when pollution was higher and more toxic inLondon than Beijing, that’s the reality.”

He said he was inspired by the use of pigeons in the first and second world wars to deliver information and save lives, but they were also a practical way of taking mobile air quality readings and beating London’s congested roads. They fly relatively low, at 100-150ft, and fast, at speeds up to 80mph.

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Which Are London's Commonest Birds?

These are the birds most regularly spotted in London's gardens. We've shown them in relative proportion. So, for example, blackbirds (centre-right) are roughly four times as common as jays (bottom-right). Most common of all are the woodpigeons (trooping across the top of the image), closely followed by the plucky house sparrow, whose numbers are nevertheless in decline.

The image is based on the most recent Big Garden Birdwatch, an annual survey of the nation's avian populations. The survey data is for the whole of Greater London, not just the centre, and is based on thousands of observations by Londoners. 

Here they are in order of abundance (roughly top to bottom in the image).

Woodpigeon, house sparrow, starling, blue tit, feral pigeon, common blackbird,ring-necked parakeet, magpie, robin, great tit, goldfinch, carrion crow, collared dove, dunnock, long-tailed tit, common gull, chaffinch, coal tit, jay.

Read on ...

Keep your her-on, Prime Minister

An avian security breach at 10 Downing Street should make us glad we do not face the venemous intrusions familiar in Australia

By Telegraph View

9:00PM BST 28 May 2015

Everyone, or everyone of normal human sympathies, was interested by the photograph of a stray heron that yesterday wandered into the entrance hall of 10 Downing Street. Wild animals seldom do take refuge indoors, let alone within such important doors.

Photo: Ramsay Jones

Birds may in any case be unintentionally subversive, living in their own world, close to ours but quite separate from it for the most part. Luckily, though, a rook down the chimney or a heron in the hall is about as bad as it gets in Britain. Not for us the funnel web under the loo seat or the alligator on the putting green.

Yesterday’s incident is unlikely to trigger a wave of invading herons. Unlike the tits that used to peck the tops off milk bottles or the sparrows that plague Italian cafe tables, herons have no reputation for mass trespass. Don’t panic, should be the response, or keep your her-on.

Source

Hunter criticised for video guide showing how to kill parakeets in back garden

RSPB is among critics of the video showing how to kill parakeets who have been stealing fruit in London suburbs

By Melanie Hall

3:04PM GMT 02 Dec 2014

The RSPB has criticised a man plagued by parakeets eating his fruit trees for making an online video guide about how to kill them in back gardens.

The video, created by hunter James Marchington for the Fieldsports Channel, shows him shooting ring-necked parakeets after creating a fake bird to entice them.

The clip, named Shooting Parakeets in London, is part of a series of videos providing advice on shooting animals.

According to the online description of the video on YouTube, "The flocks of ring-necked parakeets that ravage the fruit farms and vineyards of the south-east of England are at last under threat.

"They went on the quarry list in 2013. Now they are in the telescopic sights of pest controllers, including the owner of The Bird Table Of Doom himself, James Marchington."

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Warning signs: why street artist ATM is painting London's endangered birds

The snipe, barn owl and great bustard have appeared on walls around the capital. Caspar Henderson talks to the artist who is capturing the birds that are vanishing from Britain

Caspar Henderson

The Guardian, Saturday 22 March 2014


More than a few artists have been moved to produce work that speaks to a long history of humans as the "overkillers" of other species – a record that appears to be culminating in a mass-extinction event at least as great as the one that killed the dinosaurs. Maya Lin's remarkable ongoing project What is Missing? allows anyone with an internet connection to view the abundance of rich and strange life forms that once existed in places where now there are concrete, cars and monoculture, and to reimagine the lives of strange and wonderful animals, from the dodo and steller's sea cow to the passenger pigeon and the Tasmanian wolf. A volume titled Ghosts of Gone Birds reproduces paintings by well-known artists of the diverse and astonishing birds that humans have eliminated in the last few centuries, from the red-moustached fruit dove and the snail-eating coua to the laughing owl.

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Bird blamed for starting fire after carrying lit cigarette butt to its nest

12:27pm Thursday 6th March 2014 in News

A bird carrying a lit cigarette to its nest is believed to have started a major fire in south London last night.

Fire investigators think the bird nicked the smouldering butt from the street below and dropped it into its nest in the roof area of the building in Stockwell, causing it to catch light.

Fire investigation officer Matt Cullen, who examined the scene, said: “When we got up into the roof, we were baffled as there were no obvious ignition sources – no one had been up to there for a long time and there were no electrics that could have sparked a blaze.

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Surely not the bird, but the careless person who discarded the lit cigarette in the first place. 

Parakeets have arrived in Harringay by Matt Salusbury

I saw a pair of parakeets - distinctive by their calls, their green coluring and the fact they they were flying in a pair - flying over the houses on the St Ann's Road side of Green Lanes, in the direction of Duckett's Common.

Parakeets are known to have gone wild in the South East of England in the mid-1960s, possibly earlier.

Until a few years ago, London's parakeets had been confined to West London (Richmond Park and the suburban Grand Union Canal), North West London (Hampstead Heath) and South East London (Gypsy Hill, Burgess Park, etc.) In late summer/early autumn last year, I started seeing them in Clissold Park, Stoke Newington, and along the Hackney Central stretch of the Regent's Canal, and heard parakeets in the skies above Alexandra Palace. I finally caught sight of parakeets above Ally Pally last week.

I'd heard what I thought were parakeets above my garden a week ago, and know I've finally seen them in the neighbourhood. They have arrived in Harringay. With so many green spaces around - Duckett's Common, Lordship Rec, Downhill's Park, Railway Fields, I'm sure they will make themselves at home. 

The West London parakeets are Indian parakeets, and the North London parakeets are Monk's parakeets. This raises the possibility of a distinctive London hybrid parakeet emerging in the near future.

http://www.harringayonline.com/forum/topics/parakeets-have-arrived-in-harringay?commentId=844301%3AComment%3A571968&xg_source=msg_com_forum

Swanning across the road: Bird gets lost and halts morning traffic on The Mall

A lone swan which wandered on to The Mall caused delays for morning commuters today.

The bird was pictured on the busy central London road outside the Cabinet Office after it blocked cars heading southbound.

It was later rescued and taken back to a nearby park.

The image was posted on an official Transport for London (TfL) Twitter account with the caption: "Supervisor to the rescue, here's the swan from The Mall. Good news is that he's been moved back into the park now."

Continued

Save our cockney sparrows, says CEMEX UK and RSPB

04 January 2014

Company & Industry News

When was the last time you saw a house sparrow? You know those small, noisy birds seen around our towns that love our rubbish. In London, the house sparrow population has decreased by nearly 70% in the last 20 years. CEMEX UK and the RSPB are working together to save the ‘cockney’ house sparrow. 

The staff on 12 CEMEX readymix concrete plants in London are helping the campaign by installing bird boxes on the sites and undertaking bird surveys to see how and if, sparrows use industrial sites. 

The nest boxes have just been erected to provide shelter and it is planned for grass and wild flower seeds to be planted in unused areas of the sites to provide food. 

According to the RSPB, who have been investigating the cause of the decline in numbers, it seems that lack of food is a major factor. The loss of wild flowers and grass areas in cities like London has resulted in less seeds and insects, two of the sparrow’s favourite foods. 

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London - parakeets - via Matt Salusbury

Matt sent me this for Watcher of the Skies

Cycling through Clissold Park in London's Stoke Newington, I heard and then briefly saw a flying parakeet. You can't miss their distinctive bright green colour. 

They've been around West London (especially along the wilder bits of the Grand Union Canal, and around Richmond Park) and North West London - Hampstead Heath – for some time now. I remember hearing that the ones in West London were Indian parakeets, and in West London they were Monk's parakeets. I've never seen them in South London, but I'm told they're now abundant round there too - Gypsy Hill, Burgess Park, etc. 

My Clissold Park sighting means they're now moving East - while Stoke Newington is an N17 postcode, it's in the London Borough of Hackney, which many Londoners would regard as the start of "East London." It's the first time they've turned up in a N postcode. 

City of London Corporation monitoring parakeet numbers in Wanstead Park following tawny owl deaths

A MOB of exotic birds has staged an invasion of a public park - and appears to be trying to turf out the native population of tawny owls.

The City of London Corporation has confirmed it is monitoring numbers of ring-necked parakeets in Wanstead Park after the brightly-coloured birds turned on a pair of baby owls.

A young tawny owl was found seriously injured at the bottom of a tree by a member of the public earlier in the summer.

A second owlet, perched in the tree above, was being attacked by a group of the parakeets.

Continued:  http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/rbnews/9937112.WANSTEAD__Park_birds_in_a_flap_over_parakeet_invasion/