Smart, adaptable and loud, parrots are thriving in cities far outside their native ranges
At Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery the living get as much attention as the dead. Groundskeepers maintain the 478-acre historic landmark as an arboretum and habitat for more than 200 breeding and migratory bird species. But many visiting wildlife lovers aren't interested in those native birds. They're at the entryway, their binoculars trained on the spire atop its Gothic Revival arches. They've come to see the parrots.
It's not always clear what makes a specific parrot species successful in habitats beyond their native ranges, Smith-Vidaurre explains. But you can get an idea of it with the Monk Parakeets. As early as 1839, Charles Darwin described this species as a major agricultural pest in South America. “These parrots always live in flocks, and commit great ravages on the corn-fields,” he wrote in his journal.
Our attraction to parrots has played a key role in their rise to world domination. Humans have traded and moved these birds around for millennia. Alexander the Great kept parrots he brought back from India in the fourth century B.C.E. The Romans, too, kept exotic parrots as pets. In North America, archaeologists have carbon-dated Scarlet Macaw bones found in New Mexico's Chaco Canyon—hundreds of miles northwest of the parrots' Central American range—to the 10th century C.E.
Although people may have introduced Monk Parakeets to new locations, the birds themselves have made the most of these novel circumstances. Juan Carlos Senar, who is head of research at the Natural Science Museum of Barcelona, started studying the city's Monk Parakeets out of curiosity. The museum hosted Monk Parakeet research in the 1970s as well, before the birds became worrisome. After all, it's objectively interesting to see displaced parrots adapting to different environments.
Senar emphasizes that he loves the species—he enjoys watching them and makes a living studying them. But there's a difference between enjoying a few parakeets and dealing with thousands of them roaming the city. He fears they'll soon harm ecosystems beyond the city limits if their population isn't managed: “They're very clever. If we wait too long, it will be nearly impossible to control them.
Evidence of the negative consequences of Rose-ringed Parakeets' entry into new locales continues to mount. Research has shown that they outcompete birds at feeding stations in the U.K., and they regularly kill competitors such as Blue Tits and black rats. All the while their populations have been ballooning in cities around the world.
Anderson can recall multiple anecdotes of public protest hindering invasive-parrot management. Humans are drawn to animals with babylike features, called “baby schema ” in psychology: big eyes, big heads and soft bodies. Culling snakes might not lead to much outcry, but people like parrots. In contrast to Monk and Rose-ringed Parakeets, which start breeding between the ages of one and three years and lay at least three eggs at a time, Sulphur-crested Cockatoos don't generally breed until they're at least three or four years old, and they lay just two to three eggs per nesting season. They're particular about where they nest, seeking out large cavities in old trees. Yet they've been able to thrive in Australia's major metropolitan areas.
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