To supplement Gene Hunns' detailed posting on Seattle's parakeets, below is
an article I wrote for the Maple Leaf News in September. It is a fairly
simple article due to the broad audience. Maple Leaf is the north Seattle
neighborhood bounded on the west by I-5, on the south and east by Lake City
Way and roughly by Northgate way on the north. Also, additional records of
Monk Parakeets includes a pair that successfully bred on Three-Tree Point in
Burien about 3 years ago. They raised two young successfully in their first
year in the traditional Monk stick-ball nest. I haven't heard if they are
still around...
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The Parakeets of Maple Leaf -- 9/26/99

For the past five or six years Maple Leaf has been home for part of the year
to with an entertaining group of non-native birds-Crimson-fronted Parakeets,
sometimes called conures. Two years ago there were as many as nine. Last
year only seven were seen. This year they are back up to nine, which implies
they bred successfully this year.

These parakeets are not what most people think of as parakeets. They are
big, raucous and dramatic-looking birds with long tails (parrots have short
tails). About 15 inches long, they are all green except for red on the
forehead and red spots on their shoulders and sometimes beneath their wings.
They are easy to recognize because of their size, and they always fly around
in one or two groups and make a heck of a racket.

The birds don't belong in the Northwest. Their native home is the mountains
of northwestern South American, but like many parrots and parakeets, they
are popular pets and they occasionally escape or are set free. Most caged
birds that get free don't make it in the wild. The climate here is too
different (cold!) from their natural environment and the available food is
not to their taste. Colorful birds are also easy marks for local predators,
from cats to hawks.

These Crimson-fronted Parakeets, however, appear to have found a small niche
in Seattle. Our mild winters don't appear to bother them and they love to
eat cedar seeds, apples and even suet from bird feeders. They spend the
spring and early summer in the Seward Park area where they nest and breed,
and then move up to north Seattle from August to February.

Escaped caged birds are very common in warmer places like Southern
California and Florida where they can become agricultural pests, and even
competitive threats to native birds, but our parakeets are unlikely to ever
grow to any significant number or peril. For us they are just an exotic
treat.

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Fred Bird fredbird at halcyon.com
1249 NE 92nd Street, Seattle, Washington, 98115
206-526-5671 - v
206-522-6557 - f