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http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20041018-0500-life-parakeets.html

Wild parakeets splash color on Seattle's gray skies

SEATTLE They fly through the park shrieking and
squawking, their chartreuse feathers flashing. Nobody
in Florida, Mexico or another tropical place would
give them a second look.

But under the Pacific Northwest's lead-gray skies, a
feral flock of colorful parakeets flies around Seward
Park, a 300-acre island of green in southeast Seattle
where they have taken up residence.

Needless to say, they're not natives.

"They're such an anomaly here. You can have the
quietest, most peaceful morning, and suddenly they're
squawking and talking," said Christina Gallegos, a
Seattle Parks and Recreation Department naturalist at
Seward Park, who estimated the flock to be 20 to 24
strong.

The birds first showed up in Seward Park some time in
the early 1990s. They're generally agreed to be
crimson-fronted parakeets, native to Central America.
Marked with red patches on their faces, the green
parakeets are bigger than the typical pet budgie most
people are familiar with.

"For us, it's just fun," said avian devotee Fred Bird,
a past president of the Washington Ornithological
Society who studies the little band of parakeets.

The flock usually call Seward Park home but have been
known to migrate 5 miles north to another park in
Seattle for part of the year.

The flock of parakeets undoubtedly began as pets who
escaped from their owners, Bird said. Such escapees
are relatively common wherever pet birds are kept.

"But usually, they don't live that long," Bird said.

AGAINST THE ODDS

These parakeets seem to have beaten the odds for
several reasons: They live in noisy flocks, which
helps them stand guard against enemies who would eat
them, such as hawks, and they can tolerate a wide
range of food.

"They're very opportunistic," Bird said. "They're
omnivores, and can eat anything, cedar tree seeds,
fruit, things like that, apples."

Changing weather patterns and warmer temperatures in
the region have likely helped the tropical birds
survive, Bird said..

"The climate is comfortable for them," Bird said.
"Whether they could have survived here 100 years ago
when the climate was substantially cooler, I don't
know."

Certainly, they're not the only exotic bird escapees
living wild in the Northwest. Vancouver, Canada is
home to some well-known Crested Mynahs.

Gayle Peters, the owner of Just Parrots, a shop near
Seward Park, said the feral parakeets are reasonably
intelligent birds, which likely helps them survive an
alien environment.

"We don't have extreme temperatures here, extreme hot
or cold," Peters said. "In winters, they're probably
in trees, nesting together. They do adapt very well."

Birders in the area say that the parakeets will visit
home bird feeders from time to time.

"I would think in this area, they would eat anything
and everything they could find," Peters said.


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Devorah A. N. Bennu, PhD
Independent Scholar and
Research Associate,
American Museum of Natural History
birdologist [at] yahoo [dot] com
public blog: http://girlscientist.blogspot.com

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