A high-pitched screech penetrates the distant hum of traffic, as two impossibly green birds tear across the Hyde Park skyline. Although Londoners have got used to their presence, visitors to the capital are still surprised to see wild parakeets, even though they’ve been here for more than 50 years.
I saw my first ring-necked (aka rose-ringed) parakeets in suburban Shepperton, sometime in the late 1970s. Then we dismissed them as escaped cage birds, like the free-flying budgies we would occasionally come across.
That all changed in 1983, when the species was granted official status as a British bird. Yet they were still scarce and localised, and it seemed as if they would remain so for the foreseeable future.
Fast forward to today, and those refugees from the Indian subcontinent have become a defining sight and sound of London’s birdlife. I wonder if, just as chicken tikka masala has been adopted as a national dish, these gaudy interlopers might eventually displace the robin as Britain’s national bird. Yet despite large flocks in London and other British cities, parakeets haven’t yet spread to the countryside, and I’ve never seen one in Somerset.
That might be just as well, given that a survey last year revealed widespread hostility to the birds. This was especially notable amongst older, rural people, while younger people and city-dwellers welcomed the non-native species. Yet I love parakeets, for bringing diversity and colour to our drab, grey lives.
