Mystery Parrot Sighted in Edgewater

Note: the above photograph is a PhotoShop alteration showing what Edgewater's "White Parrot" may look like.

Two separate sightings in the last two weeks of a pure-white parrot in Edgewater, New Jersey, have electrified wild parrot-watchers in the town. According to eyewitnesses who have spied the bird flying around town, the parrot is too small to be an escaped cockatoo, nor have any escaped cockatoos been reported in the area. Initial speculation was that the white parrot may in fact have been a pigeon mistaken for a parrot (both species co-habitate on River Road). But the man who spotted the white bird on Monday perched on a fence in Veteran's Park insists it's a parrot, not a pigeon.

No photographic evidence of the white parrot yet exists. Local birders plan to mount multiple expeditions soon to capture a picture of it. Some speculate that this bird may be a color-mutated Quaker parrot. We hope to have more information on this bird soon.

Strange Tales of Avian Invaders

About two weeks ago, I was telling a woman I met at a Manhattan cocktail party about the fact that there are wild parrots roaming over Brooklyn, the Bronx, and New Jersey, and she was genuinely horrified. "I certainly hope they're not spreading disease!" she said. "Do they attack people?"

I assured this woman that to my knowledge, wild parrots aren't any nastier than any other form of wildlife ordinarily found in urban areas of the U.S.A. I later found out that she had recently seen War of the Worlds, which may have caused her to view any invasions, even by extremely cute parrots, to be apocalyptic.

Still, there are enough myths about these parrots to float a boat, and they begin with the parrots' arrival here; what I call their Myth of Origin. In the last few weeks, I've heard the following stories about the Brooklyn parrots' arrival, each of which contains a dollop of truth and a dollop of nonsense:

1. They arrived when an Argentinean tramp steamer sunk in New York Harbor.
2. They escaped from a New York zoo aviary that collapsed in a blizzard.
3. A crate full of them fell off a truck back in 1998 that was transshipping them from Kennedy airport.
4. The hundreds of parrots now in Brooklyn are all related to a single mother and father.
5. They were blown here by Hurricane Gloria in the mid-1980s.

As I discussed in What Are Wild Parrots Doing in Brooklyn?, I believe that they came to Brooklyn in the late 1960's, because this incident has been widely quoted in the scientific literature about them, and I have received at least one direct report from a person who remembers seeing them at Brooklyn College in the early 1970's.

Still, while the Brooklyn Parrots' Myth of Origin may be reasonably settled, the more I study these birds, the more odd stories I run into. Yesterday, a guy in Midwood told me that on Ocean Avenue, there are wild parrots running rampant near 18th Street, but that they aren't Quaker Parrots at all. "They've mated with another kind of parrot," he said. "They're big and they're not green!" Last week, I ran into someone who insisted that the parrots' arrival in the New York Area was a sure sign of Global Warming. "There are going to be parrots at the North Pole in a few years," he said. "You can blame the Republicans for this one!"

Brooklyn is a borough that has always cherished its legends: Diamond Jim Brady, Steve Brodie, the "Sandhogs" who built the Brooklyn Bridge, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and lately, the Brooklyn Parrots. Truth, fiction, myth and legend are free to intermingle in this fecund borough, producing an offspring that is wonderfully myterious, like the birds themselves.

The wild parrots that now inhabit the U.S.A. are just beginning their odyssey here, and thanks to these stories, it is already a mythic one. Nobody knows how it really began, or how it is likely to end. But with so many myths, superstitions, and working fictions already in play, it is clear that these wild parrots will carry these mysteries with them in ever widening circles, shrugging off the cold hand of rational science as easily as they do a frigid Brooklyn morning in February.

What are Wild Parrots Doing in Brooklyn?

What are Wild Parrots Doing in Brooklyn?
(Updated 9/12/2008)

There is much mystery surrounding the appearance of these remarkable birds in Brooklyn, but it can safely be said that they did not fly up here from Argentina on their own.

1967: The Great Escape

There are a lot of wild theories about the parrots, and they range from the odd but possible (sinking ships, overturned trucks, etc.) to the nearly unthinkable (at least one source claims that the parrots were blown to the U.S.A. by Hurricane Gloria in the mid-1980s). But the theory that has the greatest credence among ornithologists is that a shipment of parrots destined for sale at New York area pet shops was accidentally released at Kennedy Airport in the late 1960's (1967 or 1968). This incident was referred to as early as 1971 in an article by ornithologist John Bull.

Much confusion remains about what actually happened at the airport. At least one source in Brooklyn has informed me that many shipments coming into the airport were opened by unauthorized people during the 1960's: Martin Scorsese's classic film, Goodfellas, based on the memoir of Nicholas Pileggi, depicts the common practice of "crews" opening crates in order to pilfer their contents. My informant speculates that a large crate bearing an indecipherable Argentinian way bill may have been opened in this fashion. But instead of finding bottles of fine Argentinian wine, the crate opener was surprised when an unruly crowd of fully-flighted Quaker Parrots burst into the air, circled the airport, screaming, and disappeared over the horizon.

Although the escaped parrots did not turn up immediately at Brooklyn College (the earliest reported sighting was in the early 1970's), it is likely that the birds survived in the park lands surrounding the airport, and made their way in due course to the campus, where we find them today. There are other theories: that a pet store on Flatbush Avenue went out of business and released them, that a truck overturned on a highway, that an Argentinean tramp steamer foundered in New York Harbor, or that the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, after many years of hosting a captive flock of monk parakeets, abandoned these birds to the skies after closing its aviary, but the JFK airport escape theory is the one that I believe is most reliable.

More than 60,000 wild parrots of this type (Myiopsitta Monachus) were shipped from South America to the U.S.A. during the 1960s and early 1970s. Why so many? Well, the Argentinians had just spent 10 years trying to wipe these parrots out. In fact, a government-sponsored program managed to kill more than 400,000 of them in the late 1950s and early 1960s. But in the mid 1960's, someone had a bright idea: instead of killing them, why not ship them to the U.S.A. and make a few extra dollars? And so did the great influx begin - as a mass deportation of parrots to our shores (how many of our human ancestors suffered the same fate?)

The 1970s: Showdown at Rikers Island

After the escaped birds established themselves at Brooklyn College, they soon began expanding their domain. Over the years, "satellite" colonies appeared in Greenwood Cemetery, Marine Park, Bensonhurst, Sheepshead Bay, Bath Beach, and Bay Ridge. The parrots even tried to establish a foothold in Manhattan's Central Park, but were driven off, not by high real estate prices, but by a hostile Parks Department which feared, wrongly in my opinion, that the parrots would crowd out local and migratory birds which use the Park.

In 1973, the Federal Government became aware of the parrots' existence in the New York area, and sent out SWAT-style eradication teams which captured many birds and shot those unwilling to surrender. Captured parrots were sent to an ultra-secure location in upstate New York, where they were kept under close observation.

One fateful morning in August, the Federal eradication teams, having achieved most of their parrot suppression efforts, approached one of the last remaining parrot strongholds, a nest complex on Rikers Island, Queens. After loading their guns and preparing their nets, a forward observation team reported disturbing news: the parrots had withdrawn and evidently disappeared into the fog. After a thorough but fruitless search of the area, the eradication teams disbanded and returned to Washington.

It will never be known whether the Rikers Island Parrots were "tipped off" by "someone on the inside" that the Feds were gunning for them. But it is likely that many of the birds we find today in Queens, the Bronx, and elsewhere are directly related to the survivors of the Great Rikers Island Monk Parrot Standoff.

Illegal Avians?

Today, Monk (or Quaker) parakeets comprise the largest group of the nine species of parrots known to live in the wild in the United States. But their success in establishing an ecological niche for themselves didn't come easily. For this reason, they are often referred to as "the world's most persecuted parrot."

Even today, these intelligent, non-aggressive birds, which no self-respecting scientist has ever claimed have caused any significant crop damage in the U.S., are regarded with extreme hostility in many states. In New Jersey and Connecticut, they are classified as a "potentially dangerous species." In Pennsylvania, they are reportedly euthanized on the spot whenever power companies find them nesting on transmission lines. In Florida, both the state Department of Transportation and the Florida Power & Light utility company do the same thing. On December 19, 2005, FPL merged with Constellation Energy Group, making it one of the largest energy companies in America, a worrisome development, given that Florida Power & Light has for years maintained secret gas chambers where captured parrots are killed en masse. If you inspect FPL's Web site, you'll be able to read one of the great lies told about these wild parrots: that they're multiplying so quickly that in the U.S.A. they're about to become a plague. In fact, the population of wild monk parakeets has stabilized, and they seldom travel very far from their base nesting locations, which are situated in suburban neighborhoods, not among wild crops. (Note 11/17/06: The page on FPL's servers containing this information has been removed).

Can Parrot and Man Coexist?

Power companies such as FPL and Connecticut's United Illuminating Company rationalize these cruel actions because their managements believe that they have no choice. They argue that humanity's need for electrical power trumps any interests that a "lesser species" such as a wild bird might have. In my view, they are missing the point, which is that it's possible to work out a way to better accomodate the interests of both species, but only if some thoughtful research is directed towards a solution. In Britain, for example, where many wild parrots now live, new techniques have been developed to insulate utility wires to thwart any short circuits or voltage drops caused by nesting parrots. In Florida, alternative nest platforms have been designed that have proved successful in luring wild Quaker parrots away from electrical power infrastructure. In Texas, utility workers will trim back nests without destroying them, which is both humane and more likely to keep the birds from "hedging their evolutionary bets" by building redundant housing and having a second brood of young, which is what these birds do when their nests are disturbed by man.

In New York, Con Edison, whose wild parrot control policy is comparatively moderate, has expressed a willingness to consider new ideas from private citizens and avicultural experts that might provide a better solution for accomodating the competing interests of humans and avians. It is my hope that such research might continue - and not be blocked (as it is in New Jersey) by the fact that the monk parakeet continues to be classified as a "potentially dangerous species," a designation that makes it impossible to fund research on solutions.

The fact that North America has a new parrot on its shores is in my view a blessing, especially because our countrymen wiped out our only native parrot - the Carolina Parakeet - nearly a hundred years ago. Nature has given us the rarest of gifts: a second chance.

Let's not blow it!