Pesky Migrants
One morning at the tail end of the UK’s first coronavirus lockdown in June 2020, Joe Eckersley was startled by a screech from above while on his walk to work in Leeds, a former industrial city in northern England. He looked up and did a double take: Sitting in a tree was a ring-necked parakeet, its bright green feathers blending into the early summer foliage. Eckersley, an enthusiastic birdwatcher, ran straight back home to grab his camera. More of the parakeets soon started popping up and, over the coming months, Eckersley trekked to the local park where they had settled almost every other day, joined by a growing group of fellow enthusiasts. “Every couple of weeks, the numbers just started doubling,” he says, still audibly thrilled three years later. “When it got towards November, we were up to 18 parakeets in the park. Then they started roosting.” Ring-necked or rose-ringed parakeets — named for the pink and black ring that frames the head of male birds — are native to parts of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. They have long colonized cities across Europe, from Amsterdam to Barcelona, but the largest population by far can be found in Britain: Estimates now put the number of breeding parakeets in the country well above 30,000, a more than twentyfold increase since the mid-1990s. “They’re doing exceptionally well outside of their native range. They’re all over the place,” says Hazel Jackson, who wrote her PhD on the genetics of ring-necked parakeets and found that most of Britain’s parakeets can trace their origin to Pakistan and northern India. UK-based journalist Yannic Rack writes about how London’s parakeet population has recently been expanding northward, and why, despite enthusiasm among birders, not everyone is happy about it.
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