Tropical treat nests in Edgewater park
If you want to experience a taste of the tropics here in the Garden State, you must visit the monk parakeet colony in Edgewater.
Monk parakeets arrived unceremoniously in our metropolitan area in the late 1960s, when a shipment of birds for the caged bird trade escaped at New York’s Kennedy Airport. These were supplemented by other caged bird escapes; as more than 60,000 birds were imported into the United States during that period. They spread quickly across New England and the Northeast, bringing fear and panic to the agricultural community and ornithologists. Would this be the next European starling, spreading across North America and causing devastation along the way? A denizen of Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and southern Brazil, this bird was considered a crop pest back to the time of the Incas.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stepped in with a comprehensive eradication program in the early 1970s, but some of these tenacious birds have managed to survive, with about 300 still present in New Jersey. They never approached starling status or became the crop pest everyone feared. America’s largest population of these interesting parrots is found in Florida, where there is believed to be between 50,000 and 150,000.
Monk parakeets get their name from their green hood, not from a solitary existence. They are quite gregarious.
These parakeets, sometimes called Quaker parakeets, are the only parrots in the world that do not use existing tree cavities to nest. This is an interesting statistic, in that there are more than 330 species of parrots.
Their unique nesting behavior has been their salvation — and their detriment. Their sturdy twig nests have supplied them with year-round shelter, especially from our harsh winter weather, but their predilection to build nests on electric and telephone poles has made them a target of telephone and power companies. In 2005, PSE&G swept through Edgewater, destroying nests since they are a fire hazard and can create power outages. But the birds continue to survive.
For listers of New Jersey birds, they have not yet been accepted as a countable species by the New Jersey Birds Records Committee. However, the committee continues to monitor their status. A number of birds recently have been reported in Cranford.
The monk parakeet is hard to miss — it is almost a foot in length and features a bright green back from the top of its head to the tip of its tail. The bird has a gray forehead, neck and upper breast, which becomes yellow on the lower breast and green on the belly and under-coverts. The bill is pale yellow-orange and the flight feathers are dark blue.
Check out tiny Veteran Memorial Park in Edgewater, at the intersection of Route 5 and River Road, if you want a peek at this amazing bird.