Heading North, the squawking parakeets that can survive cold

PARAKEETS are thriving in our parks and woodlands by bulking up – and could now spread north, scientists have said.

The bright green birds, native to Africa, are becoming more ‘muscular’ to withstand the chilly climate, experts say.

There are around 50,000 ring-necked parakeets in England, mostly in Kent, Surrey, London and Sussex. They are moving into Essex, Hampshire and Cambridgeshire and have been spotted in Manchester and even Scotland.

Researchers in the journal Biological Invasions wrote: ‘The morphology of individual [parakeets] from European populations has diverged from the morphology of native [African] individuals.’ They suggested that while the UK birds grow stronger to adapt to the cold, the weak birds die if they can’t cope, leaving only the hardiest behind. Both factors could be behind their ‘invasive success’.

It isn’t known exactly when the first breeding parakeets came to Britain but it is thought they were cage birds that were freed in the 1960s. One theory is that they escaped from the set of the Humphrey Bogart film, The African Queen, which was filmed in London in 1951.

They may be driving out native birds such as nuthatches by hunting nestlings and taking over their tree cavities, the British Trust for Ornithology has previously suggested.