Rose-ringed Parakeet - Feral Birds

Feral Birds

The Rose-ringed Parakeet has established feral populations in India, a number of European cities, South Africa and Japan. There are also apparently stable populations in the USA (Florida, California and Hawaii) and a small self-sustaining population in Tunis, Tunisia, and Tehran, Iran (concentrated in the north side of the city). They are also found throughout Lebanon, Israel, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman. There are a small number of escaped birds in Australia.

The European populations became established during the mid to late 20th century from introduced and escaped birds. There are two main population centres in Britain: the largest is based around south London, where they can be regularly seen in places such as Battersea Park, Richmond Park, and Greenwich Park; the smaller population can be seen in Surrey and Berkshire, and by 2005 consisted of many thousands of birds, known as the Kingston parakeets. The winter of 2006 saw three separate roosts of circa 6000 birds around London A smaller population occurs around Margate, Broadstairs and Ramsgate, Kent. Elsewhere in Britain, smaller feral populations have become established from time to time (e.g., at Studland, Dorset, Kensington Gardens, and South Manchester). It has been suggested that feral parrots could endanger populations of native British birds, and that the Rose-ringed Parakeet could even be culled as a result. A major agricultural pest in locations such as India, as of 2011 the Rose-ringed Parakeet population is growing rapidly but is generally limited to urban areas in southern England where their preferred diet of seed, nut, fruits, and berries are available in suburban gardens and bird feeders.

In the Netherlands, the feral population in the four largest urban areas (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and especially in The Hague) has been estimated at more than 10,000 birds, more than double the number of birds estimated in 2004. There also exists a feral population in Belgium, with as many as 5,000 pairs estimated in Brussels. These originate from an original population that was set free in 1974 by the owner of the Meli Zoo and Attraction Park near the Atomium who wanted to make Brussel more colourful. In Germany, these birds are found along the Rhine in all major urban areas like Cologne, Bonn, Ludwigshafen and Heidelberg, Wiesbaden and in the northeast of Hamburg. Other populations are found around Paris, Rome – notably in the gardens of the Palatine Hill and at Villa Borghese -, in Barcelona and in Lisbon.

The specimens in these naturalized populations often represent intra-specific hybrids, originally between varying numbers — according to locality — of the subspecies manillensis, borealis, and/or (to a lesser extent) krameri along with some inter-specific hybrids with naturalized Psittacula eupatria (Alexandrine Parakeet).

However, in some parts of South Asia—from where the Rose-ringed Parakeets originated—populations of these birds are decreasing due to trapping for the pet trade. Despite some people's attempts to revive their population by freeing these birds from local markets, the Rose-ringed Parakeet's population has dropped drastically in many areas of the Indian subcontinent.