London Squawking: The Rise of the Ring-Necked Parakeet

 Who's a pretty boy then? 

Photo by Tim Blackburn / PA

I.

Originally from Africa, the bright green ring-necked parakeet that now thrives in London and SE England, is one invasive species that we can all welcome; for surely everyone loves parrots which make a colourful (if rather noisy) addition to British wildlife.  

Well, probably not everyone, but I don't wish to discuss those who hate parrots here; I would like, rather, to discuss the question of how the tropical birds were introduced into the UK, as this has been a subject of contention and, indeed, urban legend ...


II.

One such legend, for example, traces their origin to a pair released by Jimi Hendrix on Carnaby Street, in the heart of Swinging London, in 1968.

Another slightly less groovy story suggests that the parrots arrived seventeen years earlier, when Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn were in Town to film scenes for The African Queen (1951) and various exotic animals were required on set by director John Huston, some of which - including the parrots - are believed to have escaped.*  

Alas, it seems that neither of the above legends relating to the origins of the UK's parakeets are true; at least not according to a team of academic researchers at Queen Mary University (London) who have looked into the question.

Their work has led them to conclude (rather mundanely) that the booming parakeet population has grown from multiple small-scale releases, some of which were accidental and others due to the intentional actions of nervous pet owners worried by sensational media reports of parrot fever (psittacosis) dating back to the 1930s. 

However they got here, we should be grateful and happy to have the birds (along with the 33 other countries that this avian migrant has made a home in). Those who call for a cull of the parrots due to expanding numbers - and who often express false concerns about their impact on native species - should, in my view, be tarred and feathered. And then shot.  

I would fully endorse what the author Nick Hunt writes here:

"In an age of climate emergency, with mass extinction ripping apart the fabric of the living world, when the dominant narrative of our times is one of loss and disappearance, collapse and diminishment, parakeets tell a different story. These plucky newcomers beat the odds, not only surviving but thriving. In a nature-depleted culture, when city dwellers are supposedly alienated from the environment and anything that is feral or wild, parakeets are the subject of outlandish speculation, the source of mystery, imagination and everyday wonder."**

     

Notes

* Although much of the movie was shot on location in Uganda and the Congo, many scenes were, in fact, filmed at Isleworth Studios, in Middlesex.

** Nick Hunt, 'The great green expansion: how ring-necked parakeets took over London', The Guardian (6 June 2019): click here to read online.

See also: Nick Hunt and Tim Mitchell, The Parakeeting of London, (Paradise Road, 2019). 

The Carolina Parakeet - He's Not Extinct, He's Resting ...

Cornuropsis carolinensis


"This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 
'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 
'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, 
run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible! This is an ex-parrot!"*

I.

Bird lovers the world over were delighted to hear that scientists have managed to sequence the genome of a dead (and, in fact, stuffed) Carolina parakeet; although saddened to have their suspicions confirmed that North America's only native parrot** was driven into the void primarily due to human activity. 

For the genetic evidence suggests that populations were buoyant until the arrival and spread of European settlers. The bird's DNA showed no signs, for example, of the inbreeding that is characteristic of species that have been in decline for many generations, across thousands of years. 

Only when the White Man arrived in the Americas, did this brightly-coloured bird - with its green plumage and distinctive yellow head that was once found inhabiting forests from New England to Colorado - face extinction. Having abruptly disappeared from the wild, the last known specimen in captivity died in the Cincinnati Zoo, in February 1918.     

Quite what happened to the bird, no one knows for sure - though we can be fairly certain that deforestation and hunting played significant roles in its demise. Like other parrots, they liked to congregate in large, noisy flocks which made their slaughter by men with guns easy to accomplish (like shooting fish in a barrel).    

II.

You might think that this, then, would be the end of the story ... That having become extinct, the Carolina parakeet, is no more: that he has ceased to be; gone to meet his maker and joined the bleedin' choir invisible, etc. But you'd be mistaken ...

For like the passenger pigeon, the heather hen, and the dodo, the Carolina parakeet is a candidate for de-extinction or bio-resurrection; i.e., the process of bringing an extinct organism back from the dead, via cloning, genome editing, or selective breeding.

Of course, this has never been done before and presents enormous technical challenges. But just because something is incredibly difficult to do, doesn't make it impossible ...

As well as birds, scienists working in this area are also hoping to bring back a species of giant tortoise, a ground-dwelling frog native to Australia, and a whole list of mammals including the European cave lion, a prehistoric wolf, and - of course - the woolly mammoth.

I have to say, I find all this very exciting to consider in a way that conservation projects, sadly, never are. It's always disconcerting, however, to discover that here - as elsewhere - the Nazis led the way, producing a breed of aggressive supercows in the 1930s, based on a species of extinct wild bull that once roamed the forests of Europe.***

Still, never mind the aurochs - bring back the dead parrots!   

Notes

* The lines quoted (pretty much from ingrained cultural memory) are from the 'Dead Parrot Sketch', written by John Cleese and Graham Chapman, and performed by Cleese and Michael Palin in S1/E8 of Monty Python's Flying Circus (7 December 1969). Click here for the version of the sketch featured in the Python film And Now for Something Completely Different (1971).

** It's true that the thick-billed parrot once lived in the American Southwest, but I think of this more as a Mexican bird that had extended its range northwards, rather than as a true native of the United States.   

***The cows, bred from wild genes extracted from domestic descendants of the aurochs, were produced by German zoologists Heinz and Lutz Heck, whom the Nazis commissioned to produce a type of Aryan cattle with muscular physiques, deadly horns, and a fighting temperament. How far they succeeded in this is debatable (criticism can certainly be made of their methodology and, physically, the Heck cattle bear little resemblance to aurochs, being shorter and fatter, for example).    

Who's a Pretty Boy Then?

Mexican red-headed parrot 

For some reason, I have developed a sudden affection for parrots; or psittacines, as some people (irritatingly) insist on calling them. 

I don't know why, but it probably has as much to do with their intelligence as with their vivid colours, for I'm also fond of birds that belong to the crow family and they mostly like to rock an all black plumage (at least here in the temperate zone that I inhabit).

The fact that parrots sometimes not only imitate but mock human beings further increases my fondness for them. It's as if they want to remind us that we are, after all, only an unusual type of ape that has, as Nietzsche says, lost its healthy animal reason along with its body hair.  

D. H. Lawrence was also amused with the manner with which these super-smart birds use their language skills to make fun of people - and their pets. In the essay 'Corasmin and the Parrots', he describes how "two tame parrots in the trees" near his house in Mexico are ever-ready to ridicule those who pass below "with that strange penetrating, antediluvian malevolence" and a squawking sound that belongs to an earlier evolutionary period (or sun).

He writes: 

"The parrots, even when I don't listen to them, have an extraordinary effect on me. They make my diaphragm convulse with little laughs, almost mechanically. They are a quite commonplace pair of green birds, with bits of bluey red, and round, disillusioned eyes, and heavy, overhanging noses."

First they mimic the sound of a servant, Rosalino, whistling, as he sweeps the patio with a twig broom: "The parrots whistle exactly like Rosalino, only a little more so. And this little-more-so is extremely sardonically funny. With their sad old long-jowled faces and their flat disillusioned eyes, they reproduce Rosalino and a little-more-so without moving a muscle."

And then they "break off into a cackling chatter, and one knows they are shifting their clumsy legs, perhaps hanging on with their beaks and clutching with their cold, slow claws, to climb to a higher bough, like rather raggedy green buds climbing to the sun", before suddenly imitating the sound of someone calling the dog with "penetrating, demonish mocking voices". 

That a bird - or any creature - should be able to pour such acidic sarcasm over the voice of a human being calling a dog, strikes Lawrence as truly incredible. It makes him chuckle and it makes him ask himself: "Is it possible that we are so absolutely, so innocently, so ab ovo ridiculous?"

And of course, he's honest enough to acknowledge the answer that comes back from an older dimension of being: "not only is it possible, it is patent". Ultimately, man is the joke of all creation who should cover his head in shame. 

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Corasmin and the Parrots', Mornings in Mexico, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde, (Cambridge University Press), 2009. 

Note that the original 1927 version of Mornings in Mexico can be read online thanks to Project Gutenberg Australia: click here.