The Smile of a Parrot.....
Here's a photograph I took in Hyde Park while I was visiting my kids last week. It's a Ring-necked Parakeet (Psittacula krameri) that has been established in Britain for several decades. In Britain, breeding was first proved in 1971 in Kent though it was suspected a year or two prior to this. Despite rumours involving Jimi Hendrix and Humphrey Bogart, there is no evidence that either had anything to do with their introduction to Britain but there were a few mass escapes in the 1970s involving more than a thousand birds when they pecked their way out of wooden holding crates. The population increased ten fold in Britain between 1995 and 2010 and is now well-established in south-east England (centred on London) with a population around 12,000 pairs, but there are scattered breeding populations elsewhere. Abroad they breed in both Asia and Africa, and biometrics suggest that British birds are from the larger Indian subspecies borealis, though this was not conclusive. The scientific name Psittacula krameri commemorates the Austrian naturalist Wilhelm Kramer. It was named by Johannes Scopoli in 1769, four years after Kramer's death and was originally known as Kramer's Parakeet.
The title by the way is from the late, great Ian Dury's Reasons to be Cheerful (part 3) "The juice of a carrot, the smile of a parrot, a little drop of claret, anything that rocks". And finally, recent DNA studies have shown that Falcons and Parrots are closely related, and looking at the shape of the bill there is a definite similarity.
The Smile of a Parrot.....
Here's a photograph I took in Hyde Park while I was visiting my kids last week. It's a Ring-necked Parakeet (Psittacula krameri) that has been established in Britain for several decades. In Britain, breeding was first proved in 1971 in Kent though it was suspected a year or two prior to this. Despite rumours involving Jimi Hendrix and Humphrey Bogart, there is no evidence that either had anything to do with their introduction to Britain but there were a few mass escapes in the 1970s involving more than a thousand birds when they pecked their way out of wooden holding crates. The population increased ten fold in Britain between 1995 and 2010 and is now well-established in south-east England (centred on London) with a population around 12,000 pairs, but there are scattered breeding populations elsewhere. Abroad they breed in both Asia and Africa, and biometrics suggest that British birds are from the larger Indian subspecies borealis, though this was not conclusive. The scientific name Psittacula krameri commemorates the Austrian naturalist Wilhelm Kramer. It was named by Johannes Scopoli in 1769, four years after Kramer's death and was originally known as Kramer's Parakeet.
The title by the way is from the late, great Ian Dury's Reasons to be Cheerful (part 3) "The juice of a carrot, the smile of a parrot, a little drop of claret, anything that rocks". And finally, recent DNA studies have shown that Falcons and Parrots are closely related, and looking at the shape of the bill there is a definite similarity.