Jimi Hendrix is NOT to blame for Britain's plague of 170,000 parakeets: Scientists finally dispel urban legend by tracing historical sightings of the bright birds back to the 1800s

Legend claims the birds were released by Jimi Hendrix or Humphrey Bogart 

Others claim a plane crash or burglars in George Michael's home released them 

New study disproves these theories and says it was likely due to many low-profile releases of unwanted pet parakeets over decades 

By JOE PINKSTONE FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 00:01, 12 December 2019 | UPDATED: 12:21, 12 December 2019

Urban legend has a range of outlandish theories for the origin of Britain's parakeets, including Jimi Hendrix, Humphrey Bogart and George Michael. 

But their true origin in the UK has nothing to do with such glamorous celebrity myths, according to new research, which reveals sightings of the birds actually date back to the 1800s. 

It has been claimed that Jimi Hendrix released the first pair of parakeets, called Adam and Eve, as a symbol of peace when he was stoned in London's Carnaby Street in 1968. A rival theory maintains that the birds escaped from the set of The African Queen, the film starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, in 1951.

But a study, published today in the Journal of Zoology, reveals the birds were reported in Britain as far back as 1855, when one was seen in Norfolk.

The data was drawn from the plotting of parakeet sightings between 1968 and 2014, resulted in 5,072 points across the country. Researchers also looked at newspaper archives from 1800 onwards but did not find any news reports on parakeets being released by Hendrix or The African Queen 

The researchers now believe parakeet numbers may have been boosted by escapes from British bird houses damaged in the Great Storm of 1987.

Experts also suspect many parakeets kept as pets were released en masse after an outbreak of 'parrot fever' in 1929, 1930 and 1952, as newspaper articles urged the public to stay away from the 'dangerous birds'. 

Sarah Cox of Goldsmiths, University of London, says pet owners would have found it less distressing to simply set their bird free from a window than have it destroyed. 

Ring-necked parakeets are an exotic bird native to Asia which now terrorise many UK neighbourhoods. 

Despite originating in warmer climes, they have adapted well to British weather and actually thrive in cities such as London. 

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Parakeets pop in to live in Peterborough

Published: 12:00 Saturday 20 July 2019

Pigeons could be having to take a back seat in Peterborough – as tropical parakeets are making the city their home.

The bright green birds normally live in Africa or south Asia, but it appears a group of ring necked parakeets have moved to Longthorpe.

Carl Whitney, who lives in Nathan Close, said he had seen a number of birds feeding near his home.

He said: “Over the past two or three weeks I have seen them in groups of five or six on a daily basis. The neighbours have seen a similar thing as well.

“They tend to be more active early in the morning or late in the evening.

“They tend to be sitting on the top of the trees, or feeding on fruit trees in the area.

“I first thought they might be escaped birds who were pets, but because there are so many of them together, I think they are colonising in Longthorpe.”

A spokesman for the RSPB confirmed it was likely the birds were living wild in Longthorpe – and the birds would be able to cope with almost anything the British weather could throw at them, despite their tropical roots.

Read on

The parakeets of Barcelona

7.12.18

It is impossible to visit the charming Catalan capital of Barcelona and not manage to see or hear parakeets. Their excitable, raucous squawks are audible just about anywhere in the city, even on its busiest streets, and most mornings you will hear them even from your hotel bedroom, as they noisily leave roost sites and head out for the day.

While self-sustaining populations of various parakeet species can be found in the urban sprawls of many European cities, no more pronounced are these exotic settlers than on the streets of Barcelona, where a remarkable seven species can be found, each established to a varying degree thanks to an agreeable year-round climate and a lack of predators and competition.

Of these, it is Monk Parakeet that is the commonest. They are so prominent that, in some parts, they have themselves become tourist attractions within tourist attractions for the millions of sightseers visiting the city each year. Noisy flocks can be encountered at just about all city's main sights, including the Sagrada Familia, Park Güell and Arc de Triomf. At Güell in particular, their huge, communal nests, built of sticks, are apparent on almost every palm tree surrounding Gaudí’s famous sculptural buildings. Meanwhile, adjacent to the Arc de Triomf is Parc de la Ciutadella, where literally hundreds of them can be found, flying around or feeding unconcernedly on the grass, often just centimetres from groups of gawping, smartphone-armed tourists, firing off innumerable selfies with the overly friendly Psittacines.

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Welwyn Hatfield: Invasion of the parakeets

PUBLISHED: 11:01 09 December 2017 | UPDATED: 11:01 09 December 2017

Nina Morgan

Residents across Welwyn Hatfield have been all of a flutter at the sight of an unusual and brightly coloured visitor to their gardens.

A number of readers have been in touch with the Welwyn Hatfield Times after spotting flocks of bright green parakeets - a non-native species - gathering in trees and enjoying bird table offerings.

Although a sub-tropical species, the ring-necked parakeets tend to live in colder areas and their native habitat is most likely the foothills of the Himalayas.

They were first spotted in the UK in Kent in 1971.

By the 1980s, they were also in London.

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Britain's native bird populations are suffering - and here's the reason why

The number of parakeets in the UK is soaring, while native species are in decline

BY ROBERT FIRTH

16:15, 27 AUG 2017

Parakeets are on the up and up in Britain, with the population here rising by 1,455% in two decades.

The tropical bird is booming while many native birds suffer.

There are 15 times more ring-necked parakeets in the UK than in 1995, says the annual Breeding Bird Survey.

The parrots have been a popular pet since the Victorian era, but have only bred in the wild since the late-1960s, learning to cope with our cold winters.

Many British birds are doing less well, with willow tits down 80% and marsh tits by 41%.

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Parakeets gone wild in Tokyo

By Allison Love, CNN

Updated 1241 GMT (2041 HKT) December 30, 2015

During the 1960s, many Japanese people owned pets for the first time. Tropical birds like Mizutani's parakeets were brought to the country from places such as India and Sri Lanka. The feral birds Mizutani encountered are the descendants of the former pets.

Despite the challenges of photographing wild animals, Mizutani began to understand more about the parakeets and their relationship with their environment.

"I learned that they change the tree on which they build nests and the time and direction they take to return home depending on the season," he said.

Mizutani's photos have an eerie quality to them and convey the feelings of fear he experienced when he first encountered the birds.

Yoshinori Mizutani spent a year photographing wild parakeets that can be found in Tokyo and other parts of Japan.

For Mizutani, the colorful parakeets are incongruous with Tokyo's urban environment. Normally, birds of this nature couldn't survive in a climate like Tokyo's. But they have adapted to the cold.

Mizutani chose to photograph the birds with a strobe light. Without the light, he said, their vivid color would be lost and the birds would appear as a dark shadow in the sky when photographed from below. In order to get close-up shots, Mizutani photographed the parakeets from buildings, all the while fearing he could be attacked.

(CNN)Every morning in Tokyo's Setagaya ward, flocks of parakeets would fly to an elm tree near Yoshinori Mizutani's home.

The parakeets, an uncommon sight in Japan with their bright-green feathers and scarlet beaks, caught the photographer's attention. As he noticed the birds each day, more and more began to arrive until there were hundreds of parakeets.

Mizutani was struck by shock and fear at seeing so many.

"I felt as if I'd walked into the Alfred Hitchcock film 'The Birds,' " he said.

Mizutani researched the parakeets and learned there was a large nest in one of Tokyo's suburbs, Ookayama. He visited the site, inhabited by hundreds of birds, and started photographing them.

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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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Family Says it Wasn't Notified of Contagious Parakeets

PetSmart removes parakeets from all stores due to bacterial disease

By Natalie Martinez

| Thursday, Jul 10, 2014 | Updated 6:29 PM CDT

PetSmart removes parakeets from all stores due to bacterial disease. NBC 5's Natalie Martinez reports.

PetSmart is alerting its customers about a bacterial disease found in parakeets at its stores that can be transmitted to humans, but one suburban Chicago family says their warning came too late.

The store has confirmed several cases of psittacosis, also known as parrot flu. When the bacterial infection is transferred to humans -- in some cases through the bird's droppings -- victims may develop cold or flu-like symptoms similar to a respiratory illness usually within one to two weeks after exposure to an infected bird.

The retailer says the infected birds have been traced to a single supplier and are asking anyone who purchased a parakeet from one of their stores between March 12 and May 20 to check their bird for illness.

The birds have been pulled from more than 500 of the retailer's stores.

New Lenox resident Wendi O'Brien bought a parakeet at an Orland Hills PetSmart in April. She learned about the sick birds after visiting the store to buy another on Tuesday night, and went she got home, her daughter discovered their pet was dead.

"The parakeet was chirping before we left. We had dinner at grandma's and we got home 9 o'clock and she started crying and brought the bird," O'Brien said.

O'Brien is upset because she says the store didn't notify them about the problem with the parakeets, and her bird had been flying around the house and exposed to elderly people and children at a birthday and graduation party.

Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Family-Upset-After-it-Wasnt-Notified-of-Parakeet-Recall-266526521.html#ixzz37l0tYAUk

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