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City Parrots is dedicated to the miracle Scarlet Macaws (Ara macao) that have been ranging free in the Netherlands for over 25 years. Toos and Nape, as we have named these parrots, allow us, and you, a closer look into the lives of wild Scarlet Macaws. Both are representatives of the endangered Mezzo-American subspecies of Scarlet macaw (Ara macao cyanoptera). Read on…
By LR Jagadheesan, BBC News, Madras
Two parrots owned by 15-year-old Tamil refugee Bhovana Nishanthini Lombert mean absolutely everything to her.
15-year-old Tamil refugee Bhovana Nishanthini Lombert with her parrots Bhovana says that she loves the parrots as much as her family. So devoted is the teenager to her feathered friends that she was willing to take them and nothing else in the arduous journey by sea from war-torn Sri Lanka to a refugee camp in the south of India. Read on…
Emagazine.com by Jayasudha Joseph
Take a walk through the dense thickets that rim the teeming marshlands along the Connecticut coast, and you may feel like you are exploring a wild South American jungle. That’s because you may hear the loud squawking and shrieking of an import from the Southern Hemisphere, Myiopsitta monachus, known as monk or Quaker parakeets.
Mostly green with yellow bellies and bright blue feathers in their wings and tail, these birds are believed to have first appeared in U.S. skies in the 1960s. Their native homeland ranged from central Bolivia to southern Brazil, Uruguay and southern and central Argentina. Today, these birds can be found in more than a dozen states, including Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Louisiana, Texas, Illinois, Oregon, California and much of the Northeast.
According to biologist Stephen Pruett-Jones of the University of Chicago, who has been studying monk parakeets at Illinois’ Hyde Park for more than a decade, there may be as many as 200,000 of these birds nationwide. Read on…
Toos and Nape appeared in the local newspaper. Amazingly they flew right into the city centre! After ending the breeding cycle they were spotted quite often in more urban area’s. At this time the birds are difficult to track during the day. Late summer and early fall there is plenty of wild stuff for them to eat and they only visit the farm irregularly. We rely heavily on the cooperation of the public to inform us on chance encounters of the birds. Have you seen Toos and Nape somewhere? Please Contact us with your information. Thank you!
The chick Toos and Nape were raising disappeared. We are not entirely sure on the cause but the previous day saw exceptional heavy downpours. The weather is the biggest killer of parrot chicks in the wild. But we can not exclude genetic problems for the chick as she was the product of three generation of inbreeding. Getting fresh blood into the population will be the priority for the upcoming breeding seasons. Contact us if you like to help us achieve this goal.
March 2005 Wouter Teunissen, Grace Innemee and Roelant Jonker discovered two Scarlet Macaws (Ara macao) on an estate in the Netherlands province of Noord-Holland. You can read the story of their discovery in “Macaws in the Famous sky over Holland�?. This field report summarises what we have learned about these two macaws.
Read the whole article in PDF here
20 years ago I first heard about Macaws flying freely in my home country of the Netherlands. I was watching a television show presented by famous Dutch comedian and nature show host Ivo de Wijs. He talked about a 17th century estate in the west of The Netherlands that was recently bought by the national forest service. He pictured the audience a romantic view on the history of the estate with many tropical plants that, like magic, got a foothold in its 17th century landscape. This magic also extended to the bird life because at the end of the show there were a few glimpses of Macaws sitting high up a tree. I could not believe my eyes. Still a child then I wanted to jump on a train to find them. But I had forgotten the name of the estate and for a long time I never heard of these Macaws again.
Reed the whole article in PDF here
These birds are fully wild. They were never caged and were born free. During the last 25 years they must have experienced nights of up to 24 degrees of frost (-24C). When we discovered the birds in March 2005 it was freezing and snow covered the land. I did not bring my camera then but I can assure you that it was a strange sight. Read on…
Authorities have shown little interest in them. They do not do any damage apart from pinching the odd apple or two. Most people are pleasantly surprised to see them.
Some birders (really only one or two) though are not pleased with these potential alien invaders. We have explained them that there really is no threat coming from these birds to the native wildlife. Being depended on human handouts in winter they could never become invasive.
The farm where these birds are fed is just in the rural area. From there they have the choice to fly into an extensive wildlife reserve or to fly into town. Funny enough they are mostly observed flying into town. Even popping up in the down town shopping centre. We suspect this is because most fruit baring trees are situated in urban areas. But they are also observed in the more rural parts of the area and in the wildlife reserve. They range for several miles.
Outside of the breeding season they are very hard to track. Most days they roost close to the nest but beyond that we rely on fluke observations and a network of birders that gracefully report sightings of them.
