Whilst at work last week, I popped outside of the building to take some meter readings, only to find that there was a flock of 15 Ring-necked Parakeets in the tree at the back. A few local birders have suspected that the parakeet roost that held over 40 birds last winter in north Oxford, had moved into east Oxford. Ring-necked Parakeets seem like much more of an east Oxford kind of bird, so it felt appropriate to see them on this side of town. But where was the roost site?
I saw the flock of 15 birds fly over the building and leave to the east, but I lost sight of them behind the local houses. Intrigued, I kept an eye open at dusk on the following few evenings and discovered that a large flock of parakeets routinely gathered in an alder tree on Henley Avenue, visible from my workplace. There were a lot of birds. On December 12th, I counted at least 56 Ring-necked Parakeets in the top of the tree:
Birds arrived from about 15:30 in small groups and gradually worked their way up to the top of the tree, calling noisily. At 16:25, in near-darkness, the entire flock left and flew to roost in a couple of tall conifers in the back garden of a house on the corner of Florence Park Road, a short distance away. Both the pre-roost tree and the roosting trees are marked on this map:
I think this is the highest count of Ring-necked Parakeets in Oxfordshire to date. Birds have been breeding in the city for a few years and from the numbers present at this roost site, the local population is clearly doing well.
Despite being an introduced species, and one that may present some challenges for some native bird species, I always enjoy seeing and hearing parakeets. They are brightly-coloured and charismatic birds. The pictures below, taken in London, show the faint pink neckband on male birds that gives the species their other common name, Rose-ringed Parakeet. The tail is blue on the upper surface and yellow underneath and their grey-blue irises are also pretty cool:
