The wind relents. Just for a bit, mind. Wouldn’t want us to feel settled. Some small birds take advantage of the lull to descend on the feeders. Coal tit, blue tit, robin – performing a group dance with complex, secret moves.
A furious squawk, a chartreuse-green flurry, a general sense of agitation. The smaller birds disperse, leaving the feeders free for the interlopers – big kids throwing their weight around in the playground. They land with a clatter and set about their business.
Ring-necked parakeets, incoming. They visit our south London garden occasionally, mob-handed – colourful bandits on a smash-and-grab mission. That bright yellow-green plumage is accessorised by a ruby beak, matching eye rings, and the slender collar (in the males) that gives them their name. Attractive bird, you might think. A welcome splash of colour in an avian landscape that can tend towards the drab, especially in winter.
But the parakeets divide opinion. Some applaud their colour and freshness; others decry them as rowdy vermin. Still others, myself included, sit in the middle, enjoying the flashiness, the exuberance, the spectacular formation flying, while also quietly concerned at their rate of growth and expansion, the possibility (as yet unproven) that they’re pushing out other cavity-nesting birds and even bats. There was talk, at one point, of a cull.
Four decades have passed since their acceptance on to the British list in 1983. I saw my first shortly afterwards, on a cricket field in Teddington, the sighting etched into my memory because it made me drop a vital catch (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it). Then very localised, now they’re almost unavoidable in London, park roosts numbering in the thousands. And they’ve spread from their original enclave in the south-east, establishing themselves in towns and cities ever more northerly – all a far cry from their original homes in the Asian subcontinent and central Africa. The origin myths involving birds released by Jimi Hendrix or escaped from the set of The African Queen are enticing, but the more mundane truth is probably one of multiple pet escapes from the 1960s onwards, adaptability and a high rate of breeding success.
As suddenly as they arrived, they’re off, darting low across the garden before rising sharply over the rooftops, the feeders swinging like saloon doors in the wake of a newly arrived gunslinger.
A short pause. A coal tit hops across on to the swaying feeder, and order is restored.
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