The wild parrots of Brooklyn

wild South American parrots escape the pet trade and take up residence in the urban jungle

Story and photos by Sarah Ause
Best Friends Magazine, May/June 2010

A cacophony of squawks and chirps echoes throughout the campus of Brooklyn College. Hundreds of wild Quaker parrots, native to Argentina, have built their nests in the athletic field’s lights and in the trees lining neighboring streets. A community garden is blooming on the west side of the field, and local resident Don Jose takes a break from tending to his plants to admire the birds, one of the largest colonies in Brooklyn. “I love them,” he says in his thick New York accent. “I hope they’ll be here forever.”

There are many theories as to how the birds came to live here: sinking ships, hurricanes blowing them north, a zoo aviary collapsing during a blizzard. The most widely accepted, and the most likely, is that during the heyday of the parrot trade in the late 1960s, a cargo shipment of wild-caught birds bound for New York City pet shops was accidentally, or deliberately, opened. However they got here, the Quaker parrots have put down roots in Brooklyn.

Still, not everyone welcomes the birds, also known as monk parakeets, as enthusiastically as Don Jose. The species is illegal to own as a pet in nine states, mostly due to fears that the parrots could threaten crops if they got loose and reproduced. In some areas of Argentina, they were considered agricultural pests and were the target of a government-sponsored eradication program. Their deleterious effect on the environment, however, is unproven, and because the birds gravitate to urban environments in the U.S., they haven’t done significant damage to crops in this country. And as Don Jose explains, they haven’t touched the community garden at the college.

In New York, their major clash is with electrical companies. As the only parrot species in the world that builds nests with twigs and other items rather than taking up shelter in existing caverns, such as holes in trees, these birds have become a city nuisance. Seeking warmth in the chilly Northeast winters, they often build their nests high up in power poles and electrical equipment, which can cause fire hazards and power outages. Electrical companies have reacted by tearing down their nests and euthanizing the birds, but they are now seeking alternative ways to deal with them.

At Greenwood Cemetery, home to another large colony in Brooklyn, the birds are proving to be more beneficial. Taking up residence in the tall cathedral gate, they keep pigeon nests at bay. Pigeon feces are detrimental to the brownstone.

Because of excessive capture for the pet trade and the loss of their ancestral habitats to development, a third of the world’s parrot species are threatened with extinction in the wild. Conservationists hope that adapting to different climates and more urban environments will help the birds survive. Nearly 15 non-native species of parrots now live in cities across the U.S., in states from Florida to California, and as far north as New York.

New York parrot enthusiast Steve Baldwin, who often acts as a liaison between the parrot and human worlds of Brooklyn, is happy the birds are here. “The fact that North America has a new parrot on its shores is, in my view, a blessing, especially because our countrymen wiped out our only native parrot – the Carolina parakeet – nearly a hundred years ago,” he says. “Nature has given us the rarest of gifts: a second chance. Let’s not blow it!”