Another DVD recommendation. The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. Documentary about the flocks of wild parrots in San Francisco–and a really interesting guy’s relationship with them. Beautifully filmed and edited.
Add my five stars, two thumbs up double twist with a half gainer to Dale’s recommendation. It’s a lovely movie. The book is quite good as well and answers some of the questions left unanswered at the end of the movie.
Mark
I believe they are in Chicago too. Brrrrrrrr!
Saul Bellow wrote about them in ‘Ravelstein.’
The movie mentions, I don’t know, seven or eight states in which there are established flocks of wild parrots.
The flock in SF that the movie focuses on has apparently nearly tripled in numbers in the last two or three years. Evidently there’s some thinking that they ought to be dealt with as a non-native species: Rounded up and exterminated.
I’ve actually been interested in owning a parrot for a long time. But, everything I learn about what it’s like to own one tells me I’m just not up for the committment! I used to raise zebra finches, and that was a ton of fun. It’s kind of like raising guppies.
A good flick, and moving. When they show those photos of a red-tail holding what appears to be a blue-headed parrot: oof.
'Course, I’m partial to our psittacine friends. . .
Having a parrot companion is a lot like having a three-year-old child. For forty to eighty years. A local vet had a macaw that was over ninety years old (and looked it, poor thing). It’s definitely a commitment to consider carefully, and comes with all the emotional highs and lows and conflicts and joy that human relationships do. I think most people should not keep parrots (not because they’re bad people, either). They are extraordinary creatures, though.
(My pal Rafi, in my avatar there, has been with me for fifteen years, and is a remarkable guy. I got him after he’d been kept in an abusive household, where he was relegated to a basement and alternately neglected and punished for failing to have the large vocabulary the owners thought he should have (he was just seven months old, and greys typically really start talking at one or two years old). It took a while to establish a trusting bond with him, but now he’s just an amazing friend, gentle and perceptive and frighteningly smart. He asks, “What? What?” when presented with new items, and then practices the new word 'til he gets it, asks for things he wants and says “No!” if I bring him the wrong items, and so on. But he can also throw tantrums and try to bite people who appear to be threatening to me or to him, and refuse to obey commands if he’s set on something. Definitely like the young kids I know.)
I have had the pleasure of rehabilitating and placing in a home one of the parrots from the San Francisco flock. It suffered a fracture and subsequent cat attack, so had quite a bad infection that needed controlling. She couldn’t be released due to the wing fracture, and I’m of admittedly mixed feelings about releasing non-natives back into the wild, generally. She gentled quite quickly, becoming friendly in just a few days, and she now lives in a great home with a friend of mine (she’s been named Wasabi). If you ask her for a kiss, and she trusts you, she’ll run up your arm and plant one on ya. Loves to eat hot peppers. She remains as feisty as any conure I’ve ever known (these are not birds for the faint-of-heart).
My feeling is that the parrots ought to be left alone for now. They do not reproduce quickly, like the introduced sparrows and starlings do, and this flock doesn’t seem to be moving beyond a limited area. They don’t compete much at all with native species (a lot of the food they eat is from plants and tress that are themselves non-natives, which natives don’t depend on). In fact, almost all parrot flocks in the U.S. live in urban areas, where native species of plants and animals are already very sparse because of the activities of the most invasive species around (us).
The SF flock’s parrots are not like Quaker parrots or lovebirds, who can build giant communal nests that can collapse power lines and trees; and even those species haven’t proved to be the problem pests that officials thought they might be, and most states have stopped actively trying to control their flocks, since the efforts don’t seem to be needed or worthwhile. So my guess is that efforts to control the parrot flock in SF would be mostly unnecessary, and divert funds from other, worthier projects. However, I also don’t think they should have special protections or actually be fed/maintained by the City. So “benign neglect” is my vote.
We have several flocks in the Bay Area; the Sunnyvale and Palo Alto areas each have flocks of different species of conures, and there is a small flock of Amazon parrots in Campbell (they roost in the redwoods in my parents’ yard every morning); the Amazon flock seems to have consisted of the same few birds for over a decade, and don’t appear to have ever had offspring.
Why don’t these parrots get the same outcry and negative treatment that those evil, horrid, child-abusing terrorist Spanish bluebells get?
Pinellas County Florida has wild flocks of feral parrots flying around. But for some reason, many do not notice. Perhaps they feel that there should be such birds winging overhead.
Chicago? I’m amazed that parrots can survive in Chicago when a drafty house is enough to make them sick.
I love em. Especially African Greys, Senegals and cockatiels. They are so amazing.
I worked with a vet who specialized in birds and saw quiet a variety.
As a “dog person” I was amazed at the personalities and intelligence of the parrots.
This vet had a Blue McCaw and a 10 year old chicadee she’d rescued when he was a chick.
I have always wanted an African Grey, but know that I can’t give it the attention it would need and deserve. They are facinating.
It adds to that tropical atmosphere so important to the tourist industry, I expect.
For the longest time, there had been flocks of wild parakeets – not monk parakeets, but the budgerigar kind – on St. Petersburg Beach. I’m not sure if they’re still there.
They are, at least as of last April. My lovely wife and I spent an afternoon lounging on St. Pete’s beach, and there they were flying around, chattering and enjoying the warm spring breeze.
That’s good to know. I live right behind St. Pete Beach, on the mainland. The keets don’t seem to have moved off the island. They’d have to fly across the water a bit, which I suppose isn’t in their interests, but you’d think they could move across over the bridge.
Beautiful movie.
Carol
In Chicago they’re monk parakeets. Its assumed they’re they result of pets “let go” by owners. I would guess any parakeet set free by its owner in Chicago is probably better off fending for itself than at the mercy of that owner’s idea of what constitutes love and care.
Quite a few of the parakeets have built nests in the trees in front of the late Mayor Harold Washington’s condo in the Hyde Park neighborhood.
Bellow (in his memoir/novel ‘Ravelstein’) places them in Hyde Park, and
describes nests hanging from phone lines, etc. I would
not have imagined such creatures could survive the
winters there.
How do you know they were enjoying it? Maybe they were pissed about something.
I just saw it too. Sort of the antidote to “Grizzly Man” (which was also great in its own messed up kind of way).
There was a species of native parrot in North America, the Carolina parakeet, which was wiped out in the ninteenth century. There are accounts of them near Albany NY. Audubon did a memorable print of them.
I really didn’t know, now that you ask. But my wife did, and she has special powers. 
That’s good. I wouldn’t want to think you were indulging in anthropomorphism.
Actually it reminded me of a show I saw on Discovery several years ago about birds. Instead of presenting the idealized image of gay little birdies singing merrily, it presented a fiercely territorial beastie who’s “song” is either intended to threaten competing birds and predators or a mating call. Savage devils they.