Saturday, February 4th 2017, 8:16
am GMTSaturday, February 4th 2017, 9:16 am GMT
By Jobeth Devera, Reporter
KAPAA, KAUAI (HawaiiNewsNow) -
Parakeets aren't typically
considered a nuisance bird. But on Kauai, that's exactly what they've
become.
Swarms of rose-ringed parakeets
are destroying farmers' crops on Kauai. And residents and visitors
complain flocks of the green-coated, long-tailed birds are roosting in
palm trees over parking areas and leaving their droppings on cars.
Their loud and noisy calls can be
heard echoing through residential areas.
"It's discouraging to
realize we're going to lose a good percentage of our crop to these birds,"
said Kauai farmer Jerry Ornellas, who mainly grows tropical fruit like lychee
and longan on his 15-acre Kapaa farm.
He said in 2016, he suffered a 30
percent crop loss due to parakeet predation.
"There's no way of knowing
what we're going to lose this year, because every year it seems to get worse
and at some point it's going to get to where we cant even farm," Ornellas
said.
Brought to the islands from
India, records show the feral birds escaped as caged pets in the 1960s.
By the 1990s, their population
had grown to about 200.
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