Queens is not the only place the tropical green birds have become firmly entrenched. Fifty years after exotic bird importers began carting them here from their native South America, the parrots have nestled into other neighborhoods in the city and beyond.
The best guess on their citywide population is around 550, though biologists say bird counts often capture just a tenth of their true totals. The parrots have set up colonies in at least 10 states, including Florida, Texas, Illinois and Oregon. They dappled European skies, breeding in England and Spain.
Today in Brooklyn, their pile-of-twig nests are built in the iron gates of Green-Wood Cemetery. They have made homes in Upper Manhattan and amid the trees in Riverside Park. They are in Whitestone and Flushing, Queens. They have built nests in Edgewater, N.J., in the slopes along River Road, an undulating bicycle path in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge, said Corey Finger, of Forest Hills, Queens, a co-owner of the birding blog 10,000 Birds.
But Queens has extended the birds perhaps the biggest welcome.
State Senator Joseph P. Addabbo Jr., who can see one of their nests from the windows of his district office in Howard Beach, is pushing two bills he introduced in 2010 to protect the parrots (also known as parakeets), though neither has passed. One would put them in a protected category. The other would require their nests be handled with care if they have to be moved. The senator says seeing the “green, rather large, rather unique-sounding parakeet” among pigeons fascinates New Yorkers.
6 comments:
Queens' politicians have been parrots for years, repeating whatever Joe Crowley and the machine wants them to say. Thank God that John Liu wasn't able to join them as yet another parrot.
Protect birds while giving the bird to residents. Good job, politicians.
A couple of years ago there was a pandemonium of parrots nesting in the lower section of Lutheran cemetery. They had apparently escaped from a train in the Bushwick terminal.
Unfortunately the cold months and hawks did them in.
There ya have it! Proof that Queens is for the birds.
As long as they are here lgally.........
HI, HAD NO IDEA PARROTS ARE WILD IN QUEENS, SAW ONE ONCE ON A TELEPHONE LINE, HAD TO DO A DOUBLE TAKE, CRAZY, GREEN BIRD IN NYC?? JUST THOUGHT IT ESCAPED FROM SOME ONES HOUSE. NEVER KNEW IT WAS A PROBLEM, WHAT PROBLEM DO THEY CAUSE?? ALSO, HOW CAN THEY LIVE IN THIS WEATHER?? THEY ARE TROPICAL BIRDS, GETS CHILLY OUTSIDE, THEY CAN EASILY DIE.
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