Learn what to pay attention to: Most parrot sightings are little more than a flash of quick-beating green wings, maybe a splash of red, and some squawking. Get a good bird guide: We recommend the Sibley (second edition) for it’s superb illustrations of most of the common feral parrot species. And now the bad news: Sorting out exactly which parrot species you’ve seen isn’t always easy. Photo © Bernard DUPONT / Wikimedia Commons Tips for Identifying Feral Parrotsįirst, the good news: It’s usually pretty easy to tell when you’ve spotted a parrot, because there aren’t any common native birds to confuse them with. Now 70 years later, the Monk Parakeet is the most abundant feral parrot in the country. Inevitably, some escaped or were set free when their owners tired of a loud, messy, demanding, long-lived pet. In the 1950s and 60s, tens of thousands of Monk Parakeets were imported to the US as pets. Take the Monk Parakeet: a squat, lime green bird native to South America. Birds are either escaped pets, creating one-off sightings, or they are the descendants of pets that have now established permanent breeding colonies. Today, the vast majority of parrots sighted in the US are non-natives. (Whether or not they are native, and if they warrant protection as endangered species, is controversial.)Either way, both birds are also established ferals elsewhere in the country. The Green Parakeet and the Red-crowned Parrot could also be native to the US, as their range occasionally extends into southern Texas. So went the country’s two native parrot species - or so we thought. The bird was last seen in the US in the Chiricahua Mountains in the late 1930s, and reintroduction attempts in the 1980s and 1990s were unsuccessful. The birds once ranged into Arizona and New Mexico, but a combination of heavy shooting, logging, and development drove the species back across the Mexican border. The Thick-billed Parrot, though not extinct, is now only found in Mexico. (The last captive bird, named Incas, lived and died in the same cage as Martha, the famed last Passenger Pigeon.) Once found in the east and midwest, Carolina Parakeets went extinct in 1918, likely due to widespread deforestation and direct hunting. The United States once had two endemic parrot species, the Carolina Parakeet and the Thick-billed Parrot. So how did these wayward parrots get here? Native Parrots, Lost & Found Using data from eBird and the Christmas Bird Count, scientists recently tallied 56 different parrot species sighted in 43 states, 25 of which are now breeding in the wild across 23 different states. Later, both my colleague and my Sibley bird guide confirmed that I had indeed seen a Yellow-chevroned Parakeet, one of several that have established breeding colonies amid the skyscrapers and urban sprawl of LA.Īs some birders and sharp-eyed observers may already know, the US is home to dozens of feral parrot species. Either that, or the 17+ hours of jetlag are causing me to hallucinate.īut the next day, now well rested, I see them again - a flash of green and gold in the hazy sun. I’m looking out of my hotel room window in downtown Los Angeles, and I swear I just saw a parrot in the palm trees across the highway.
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