Pirates of the Bird World

Ring-necked parakeets, also known as rose-ringed parakeets, have been visitors to our garden ever since we moved in 15 years ago. Until recently, their visits were intermittent and their number seldom exceeded a dozen or so.

Two years ago, two (or it might have been three) of them took over a nest hole in our oak tree that pied woodpeckers had been using for several years. In the year of the takeover, one of the woodpeckers had frightened off a squirrel which was taking too close an interest but the parakeets defeated it, hard though it tried.

In the spring of this year, one of the crows that had built a nest in the same tree the year before, returned to its nest. Immediately, the three parakeets which happened to be in the tree at the time flew over and stationed themselves in different places a couple of yards from the crow. Four other parakeets flew in at once from the neighbouring garden and did likewise, surrounding the crow in a ring. The crow flew off and has not used its nest since. Crows now visit the garden less often than they did. Each evening, substantial numbers of parakeets fly through the garden, some coming to rest briefly, before going on to their evening roost, presumably the Esher Rugby Club's premises at the comer of Rydens and Molesey Roads, where several thousands are reported to spend the night.

During august, we had a flock of some 50 parakeets which fed in the oak tree and the adjacent beech for about two weeks. Most have now moved on to tackle our neighbours' apples though some stayed to take most of the berries from our whitebeam. They are wasteful feeders, much of what they have bitten off falling to the ground and their usual practice with apples being to take a single peck out of each.

The amount of food which they are consuming and/or destroying must be having a significant effect on the food supply which native birds rely on in addition to their interference with the latter's breeding. I think that it is time to control parakeet numbers for the sake of native birds which are already in difficulties with their human competitors.

Ian Davidson