Good Golly Miss Polly

Invasive Alien Species may sound like something weird from a Sci-fi comic but in our business, there are a lot of them, and they are very real.  We are not talking about Dr Who-manoids but about organisms not autochthonous to Britain that have found their way here and are thriving, sometimes with what are considered to be adverse ecological impacts. Some people call them non-native species but scientists generally prefer “alien” or “exotic” as descriptors. Among them are parrots – aha, the eponymous title to this piece. There are thirteen parrot species recorded on the British list as I write, of which four are known to breed here. These four are:

    The ring-necked ore rose-ringed parakeet (Psittacula krameri)

    The Alexandrine parakeet (Psittacula eupatria)

    The monk parakeet or Quaker parrot (Myiopsitta monachus)

    The blue-crowned conure (Aratinga acuticaudata)

Of these, only the ring-necked parakeet is regarded as naturalised, the others having small populations in London. You might also see an occasional escaped budgerigar (Melopsittacus undulatus). The coloration of the ring-necked parakeet is variable and it is sexually dimorphic. The RSPB provide a general description, though, as “large, long-tailed and green with a red beak and a pink and black ring around its face and neck [see below]. In flight it has pointed wings, a long tail and very steady, direct flight. Often found in flocks, numbering hundreds at a roost site, it can be very noisy”. It is most numerous in Sussex, Surrey and Kent, entirely at home in disturbed habitats. Originally its range extended through India, Burma and central Africa but it has spread widely and several subspecies have been determined.

We should note that it is against the law to introduce alien species into the wild, even if they are pretty!

A feral ring-necked parakeet photographed by Tony Austin on a bird feeder in Kensington Gardens, London. (Reproduced, cropped, under Creative Commons licence CC BY 2.0, thank-you.)