Madrid to begin 'humane slaughter' of parakeets

Spanish capital to reduce number of brightly coloured birds over public health risk fears

Sam Jones in Madrid

Tue 8 Oct 2019 09.25 BSTLast modified on Tue 8 Oct 2019 19.50 BST

Madrid’s city council has grown sick of its parrots.

Or, more precisely, of the thousands of shrill, bright green monk parakeets that screech through the capital’s skies and build vast nests in its trees.

The council has announced plans to reduce the number of parakeets after a recent survey showed the population had grown from 9,000 birds three years ago to 12,000 today. In 2005, there were only 1,700 of them in Madrid.

Although the birds are native to Argentina, many were imported as pets before ownership was outlawed eight years ago.

The city council says the swelling population needs to be brought down as the parakeets are competing with other species for food and damaging the environment by stripping vegetation to build their huge stick nests.

It also says they pose a public health risk as they can pass illnesses such as psittacosis (parrot fever), avian flu and salmonella on to humans.

And then there is the size of their nests.

“As time goes on and they get bigger, these nests can become dangerous and weigh up to 200kg,” the council said in a statement.

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Escaped pet parrots are now naturalized in 23 US states, study finds

Date:  May 14, 2019

Source:  University of Chicago Medical Center

When Stephen Pruett-Jones, PhD, an ecologist at the University of Chicago, first came to Chicago in 1988, he stumbled on a unique piece of the city's history: the monk parakeets of Hyde Park.

The squat, bright-green birds aren't native to Illinois, or the United States at all. The U.S. originally had two native parrot species: the Carolina parakeet and the thick-billed parrot. The Carolina parakeet is now extinct; the thick-billed parrot, a Mexican species that ranged into the southwestern states, was driven out of the U.S.

In the 1950s and 60s, tens of thousands of monk parakeets were imported from South America as pets. Inevitably, many of them escaped or were released. By 1968, they were found breeding in the wild across 10 states, including a colony in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, home of the University of Chicago campus.

Pruett-Jones, who usually studies wrens and other wild birds in Australia, noticed a large group of the parakeets on his daily commute. He started sending students out to study the birds and eventually organized an annual lab project to count them.

"I have never actually held a wild parrot in the United States," he said. "But indirectly I've become the spokesperson for parrot research here because when I saw the monk parakeets in Chicago, I realized nobody else was working on them."

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Monk parakeets invade Mexico

Date: September 19, 2017

Source: Santa Fe Institute

Thanks to the international pet trade, populations of exotic animals are popping up in unexpected places worldwide. One of these successful invaders is the monk parakeet: a small, green parrot native to South America that now flies free in cities across North America, Europe, and elsewhere around the world.

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Mental math helps monk parakeets find their place in pecking order

Date: September 10, 2015

Source: National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS)

Summary: A study of aggression in monk parakeets suggests that where they standing, the pecking order is a function of the bird's carefully calibrated perceptions of the rank of their fellow-feathered friends.

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How to beat monk parakeets at their own game: Scientists prevent nests on utility poles

Date:

September 30, 2014

Source:

University of Connecticut

Summary:

Researchers have announced they have found a way to prevent Monk Parakeets from building huge nests on utility poles by blocking access to the electric lines that are the gateway to their nesting sites.

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