How Did These Wild Parrots Get to NYC? - Another Theory

Did the wild parrots that now inhabit NYC escape from New York's Kennedy Airport or New Jersey's Newark Airport? If the latter, it might explain how this wild parrot got to Edgewater.

I opened a copy of the Metro newspaper today and read a Letter to the Editor written by Mr. Rudolf R. Birzin of Manhattan. Mr. Birzin notes, correctly, that there are several wild parrot colonies in Brooklyn in addition to the main colony in Midwood, but his explanation of their arrival is one I've not heard before: "The green parrots started in Newark, N.J., in the 1960's living in a cemetery. They are believed to have escaped from Newark Airport."

This is the first time I've heard of an escape of parakeets from Newark Airport (the most oft-cited account is that they escaped from Kennedy Airport, not Newark). It is, of course, possible that wild parrots escaped from both airports, or that Mr. Birzin's account is a variation of the Kennedy escape story. We know that many mysterious legends swirl around the parrots' origins.

We also know from eyewitnesses is that the parrots arrived at Brooklyn College no later than 1971, but before this date, the trail grows murkier and muddier. I would like to see more evidence of the Newark escape theory before modifying my standing account of the parrots' arrival on our shores, but if Mr. Birzin is correct, it would explain how the parrots which reside in New Jersey today got there. According to eyewitnesses, they were first seen in Hoboken in the 1980's and moved to Edgewater, where we find them today, in the early 1990's. It does not overly strain credibility to imagine that they might have begun their strange sojourn through New Jersey in a Newark cemetery.