Good morning, friends, and happy weekend. This week’s bird is the monk parakeet. I saw a few of these on my recent trip to Barcelona, but the pics I took weren’t really post-worthy. The monk parakeet is native to parts of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay. In several of these countries, it is considered an agricultural pest, and none other than Charles Darwin made note of it as such. Imagine the father of evolution assessing your existence as “this bird chaps my ass.” Once a popular pet, ownership, breeding and sale are now banned in many places, as these are the sources of its impressive distribution. The monk parakeet is very adaptable and successful, and integrates well into urban environments. There are self-sustaining feral populations recorded in “Spain, Portugal, Azores, Madeira, Balearic Islands, Gibraltar, France, Corsica, Malta, Cyprus, Sardinia, Italy, Greece, Romania, Channel Islands, Great Britain, Ireland, Germany,^[15] and Belgium, as well as in British Columbia, Canada,^[16] Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Israel, Bermuda, Bahamas, the United States,^[17] Cayman Islands, Puerto Rico,^[18] South Korea, and Singapore.^[19]”

Local bans and “eradication programs” exist in parts of the US, and one of our links today is to a story about Madrid instituting a culling program in 2019.   

^{The monk parakeet is of concern to local ecosystems for several reasons.  It can eat grain before it has a chance to sprout, causing problems even in its native range.  As with any invasive species, it can outcompete local wildlife for food.  It can also damage local flora while foraging or building its nests.  Finally, the nests themselves can reach such a size that they present a hazard to anyone below should they fall.}  

On that note, monk parakeet nests are something else.  The birds live in colonies, and are one of only two species of parrot that build nests out of sticks in trees or artificial structures as opposed to occupying a preexisting hole in a tree.  Each pair in a colony will have their own entrance to their “apartment,” and the colonial nests can grow as big as a small automobile, attracting other species of birds and even mammals as tenants.  Like another bird we recently covered, monk parakeets often have “helper individuals,” young mature birds who stick around their parents nest to help raise the next generation.  Monk parakeets are able to survive temperate climates as far north as Washington state in part because of their tendency to build their nests on or around heat-producing elements of utility poles.  

Monk parakeets may have individual voice prints that allow parrots to recognize each other based on the sound of their voices and not just based on what the “speaker” is saying.  They also have a variety of local “dialects.”  If a given population is descendent from a small number of escaped/released pets, they will often pronounce certain “phrases” in a way which is unique to to their population.  A larger group will have several different dialects within it.  At least three “dialects” have been found in the monk parakeet population around Milford, Connecticut, for example.

Be hardy and intelligent out there, friends.  We’ve got this. 

P.S. Sorry about the fonts. I tried, I really did.

Links: https://tinyurl.com/3x7pfs5f, https://tinyurl.com/mrytwthc, https://tinyurl.com/yzb67xzn, https://tinyurl.com/3yysddne