Speaking of parrots ... I apologize for not posting this on Tweeters when it happened, but about a month and a half ago, I saw a flock of 10 to 12 parrots of some type in Shoreline, a few blocks north of the Seattle city limits and a few blocks east of I-5. They were not a mixed flock but all uniformly sized and colored: approx. pigeon-sized (but slimmer, with fairly long tails), a very bright spring green all over, with a little bright yellow on the head/face (i.e., head was mostly green, not mostly yellow). I first saw them flying above the trees across the street, and my first thought was that they were some kind of duck from flock size, how fast they flew, and the way they set their wings to come in for a landing, but then I realized that they were something very unusual when the "ducks" landed in a big fir tree, and I could see that they were bright green! I ran for my binoculars; meanwhile some crows started harassing them and they flew out of the tree, so I only got a very quick glimpse of two of them through the binocs as they flew away.

But they were definitely parrots of some type. They were quite a bit bigger than pet-store parakeets; smaller and slimmer than an African Grey -- somewhere in the conure range, but I think a little bigger than conures, with longer tails. I tried to look them up on a few parrot photo websites (google search: "photos of parrots"), but didn't find a match upon a quick search -- should look further but haven't yet. They were also definitely not a mixed flock, but all the same species, and there were at least ten, perhaps twelve. I didn't see any other colors except shades of bright spring green and a little yellow on the head/face. My fiance also saw them later that same day (without binocs), in the same neighborhood. We haven't seen them since (although I did hear a rather mysterious bird call this weekend, but then couldn't find the bird).

Has anyone else seen parrots around North Seattle/Shoreline? Does anyone know what type of parrot it might have been?

Thanks,

Andrea Grad
Alki
agrad at helsell.com