Don

My neighbour just pointed out we have at least two budgies living in our guttering high up where I guess they have a nest. Apparently they are 'special' budgies in colour, ie not your usual budgie. Or something like that.

So: how can we catch them?

I guess this happens a lot in Aus - when you want a pet you go out and catch a couple of lorikeets, I suppose.

What's best? - seed or trap?

CON

Why do you want to catch them Don?

Don

Maybe I could sell them?

Hels

Well, I wont suggest my MIL's cat then.....

I know he could do it....he got her budgie just the other week....

CON

Oh, so you are a capitalist Mr Don. Good luck to you. I would try the seed and net method.

Don

All right.

Maybe if I say: I can save them from certain death in the winter (can be -20 C out here in the sticks, though in city might be warmer. More usually -10 C).

Don

Interesting: there are now real dangers UK will have a significant new population of 'wild' or feral birds. There are conservatively reckoned to be 100,000 budgies, parrots, parakeets etc living wild in London alone.

diddy

have you tried using an airgun?

Don

Strichnine in some sunflower seeds when autumn hedgerow foods finish?

diddy

You could show it the thread on the Olympic Medal Tally and bore it down to earth.

Siren & Brian

Hose it down with water, usually slows down birds a bit. Thats how I have caught Pink and Grey Galahs in the past.

Don

Could be worth a try, thanks Siren.

renth

About 5 years ago I was in the outside lane of the M25 when I noticed a flash of colour up ahead. It was a large parrot flying about 6 feet above the middle lane, following the road. I'll never forget the look on the parrots face as I overtook it, it looked like it was on a mission.

jayr

That's a lot of homeless birds on the streets of London...

Don

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~wolf0977/species.html

and http://www.madville.com/link.php?id=72766&t=11



Wild parrots settle in suburbs


The number of wild parrots living in England is rising at 30% per year, says an Oxford University research project.

Parks and gardens in the leafy London suburbs have been adopted as a preferred habitat by birds that are native to southern Asia.

In the Surrey stockbroker belt, a single sports ground is believed to be home to about 3,000 parrots.

The rate of increase, helped by mild winters, is much greater than had been expected.

The findings have also been echoed by a large number of e-mails from BBC News Online readers, who have reported how parrots - particularly parakeets - have now become familiar sights.

Parrot hotspots

These hundreds of e-mails, including photographs, highlighted hotspots such as west of London, Surrey and parts of Kent.

But there were also parrots reported in inner-London, including parks in Peckham, Brixton, Greenwich and Kensington.

And a few parrots had been spotted in East Anglia, the North West and in Scotland.

There were also sightings from readers overseas, reporting urban parrots in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain and the United States.

E-mails from readers also offer a range of theories about the arrival of parrots in Britain - including that they were brought by Jimi Hendrix, that they escaped during the making of a film and that they were released from aviaries damaged during the great storm of 1987.

Researchers have been tracking several varieties of parakeet, originally from countries such as India and Brazil, but which are now surviving in ever-greater numbers in southern England.

The findings, from Oxford University's Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology, give a glimpse of exotic creatures in unlikely places.

Last summer, there were areas of woodland that sounded more like equatorial rain forest than suburban parkland.


Adam Tandy, Richmond

Alexandrine parakeets have been spotted by Lewisham crematorium and orange-winged parakeets, native to the Amazon, have now set up home in Weybridge.

South American monk parakeets have formed a colony in Borehamwood and blue-crowned parakeets were observed in Bromley.

There have been reports that there could now be 20,000 wild parrots, including parakeets, living in England, with the largest concentration around London and the South East.

The population boom has been put down to a series of mild winters, a lack of natural predators, food being available from humans and that there are now enough parrots for a wider range of breeding partners.

In particular, they have been observed in growing numbers in the outer suburbs and the Home Counties, with trees in parkland and sports grounds becoming their homes.

Rugby fans

Esher Rugby Club's ground was observed to have had a parrot population that grew from 800 to 2,500 in the space of three years - and researchers estimate there might be 3,000 living there.

Project Parakeet, led by researcher Chris Butler, has been examining the growth of the population of wild parakeets - with the aim of finding whether the current sharp increase will continue.

If it does, there are concerns that wild parrots could become a pest to farmers or threaten other wildlife.

Grahame Madge, spokesman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), says parakeets are bigger and bolder than some of their native rivals - and "are quite capable of evicting other birds".

They also like fruit and he says that if they moved into fruit-growing areas, it would pose problems for farmers.

Heathrow flights

At present, the RSPB says parakeets are particularly concentrated in the west London, south-west London and Thames Valley area - and this has given rise to the urban legend that the birds originally escaped from a container at Heathrow airport.

Nigel Pettinger, Bromley

But Mr Madge says there has never been any proof of this theory.

Escaped parakeets have been spotted nesting in this country since the 19th Century. Even though there was a wild population in the 1960s, the numbers remained very low through to the mid-1990s, when the population appeared to start increasing more rapidly. Birdline UK's Parrot Rescue, which looks after abandoned birds, says parrots are now acclimatised to conditions in this country and are quite capable of living and breeding here. But this is causing problems for other native birds, which are being pushed out by the growing numbers of parrots