Who’s this pretty boy in a Derby park, then?
RARE, BRIGHTLY-COLOURED PARAKEETS SEEN IN THE CITY
RARE, brightly-coloured exotic birds have been spotted in a Derby park. Four ring-necked parakeets, with their beautiful green feathers and a red beak, have been seen at Alvaston Park.
Two other green parakeets were also sighted in the Ashbourne Road area of Derby.
They are a common sight in London and Kent, where their population has boomed since 1969 – but it is not clear how they arrived in the UK. One theory is that a flock escaped from the filming of Katharine Hepburn’s film The African Queen in the early 1950s in Surrey.
Another – less likely – idea is that Jimi Hendrix released them in Carnaby Street in the late 1960s because he was bored of London’s drab skies.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said the species has been a popular pet since the Victorian times, and today’s parakeets are likely to have escaped or been deliberately released.
Kieron Huston, of the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, said 15 ring-necked parakeets were spotted in the county in 2016 – a figure that has steadily increased since their first sighting here in 2003.
He said they had also been seen in Derby’s Pear Tree area, the Toyota plant in Burnaston, and in Long Eaton.
Mike Schofield, 69, who took the pictures of a parakeet in Alvaston this week, said he had seen four of the birds in Alvaston Park.
There are believed to be 8,600 breeding pairs of ringnecked parakeets in the UK.
He said: “There’s definitely been an increase in numbers since they first arrived in Derbyshire. It’s quite likely they are breeding somewhere in Derby.
“They are scarce visitors and nested in the county for the first time in 2003 and also bred in 2004.
“So they are now being seen regularly each year, albeit in small numbers.”
Mr Huston said the birds were drawn to city areas with large parks – such as Alvaston Park – for a number of reasons.
“They probably would gravitate towards the cities – it seems to be that with the urban areas the ‘heat island effect’ helps them through the winter. Some of the parks have larger trees, so they can find nest holes.
“I think it’s also to do with there being a range of tree species.”
Ring-necked parakeets (Psittacula krameri) have not yet caused a problem in the UK, although the RSPB says it is feared that they may affect native plants or fruit-growers as the population increases.
There are native ranges of the birds, also known as roseringed parakeets, in Africa and South Asia, but feral populations have established in other parts of the world.