City Parrots

A type of parakeet not typically seen in Lake County made a stop in Vernon Hills and went right to the top—perching on a branch in the back yard of Mayor Roger Byrne.

“Where the heck are they from?” Byrne wondered. “Are they escaped pets?”

They could be. Or the bright green exotic birds might be from a famous colony of Monk Parakeets that has been living in Hyde Park since 1972 or from some other nearby colony.

Lisa Warner heard a screeching noise she thought was coming from squirrels. Her husband, Craig, spotted two birds in Byrne’s arborvitae tree on Sept. 21. Barking dogs flushed out four birds.

“They flew to a neighboring tree right behind Countryside Fire Station, and I took over 50 photos of these gorgeous birds,” Warner said. “I forwarded these photos to many people and someone wrote me back that she thought she saw a parrot that morning in the park, but dismissed it. She was thrilled to know she was not seeing things.”

Gary Glowacki, a wildlife biologist for Lake County Forest Preserves, confirmed that the birds spotted by the Warners are Monk Parakeets.

“There have been a few sporadic sightings here and there (in Lake County),” Glowacki said. “They’re definitely fairly rare.”

The screeching that Warner heard is a common way people discover the birds, said Stephen Pruett-Jones, associate professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at University of Chicago. Monk Parakeets are quite vocal.

Sporadic sightings

Pruett-Jones has studied Monk Parakeets for years. He said that prior to 2000 there were sporadic sightings, including as far north as Zion.

“Biolgists refer to it as they were blinking in and out,” Pruett-Jones said.

However, now the birds are more common in the areas surrounding Hyde Park.

“In the late 1990s or 2000, the birds in Hyde Park started to move out, and the population in Hyde Park has actually gone down,” Pruett-Jones said. “In 2004, there were 800 birds in the greater Hyde Park community. Now, there are 400. But the population in surrounding areas has gone up dramatically. They now occur all the way from Northwest Indiana to the Wisconsin border.”

The Vernon Hills birds could be adults or offspring from Hyde Park. Or they could be the offspring from a different colony as now is the time that offspring produced in the spring and summer are dispersing, Pruett-Jones said. They could be, as the mayor wondered, escaped pets or birds that were intentionally released. If they intend to stay, they’ll build a nest, and it will be quite large.

Pruett-Jones said a Monk Parakeet nest is 50 percent larger as a sphere than a basketball and includes an interior cavity. When a nest is built, other pairs of Monk Parakeets build on top of it, as the birds live in colonies.

“Most nests you see are the size of a small couch, and three or four pairs are living in this communal nest,” Pruett-Jones said. “In Hyde Park, there used to be a nest the size of a Volkswagen Beetle in overall dimension. The Monk Parakeet is the only parrot species in world that builds its own free-standing nest, and they use it differently than every other bird.”

Pruett-Jones said Monk Parakeets are most common in Florida, Texas, Illinois and Rhode Island. Monk Parakeets, introduced from South America as pets in the late 1960s, prefer a warmer climate.

“It’s pretty remarkable that they survive winter out here,” Glowacki said. “They will nest in street lights or power lines for warmth.”

The Chicago area is not the farthest north the birds have been seen, but it is the harshest climate that they thrive in, Pruett-Jones said. The birds don’t migrate south. They can survive Chicago winters because they build their own nests while other parrots require large tree hollows or palm trees, Pruett-Jones said, and because they eat from backyard feeders.

“If people did not have backyard bird feeders, Monk Parakeets would all be dead in a few years,” Pruett-Jones said.

The nature buffet in Byrne’s back yard might have been what attracted the birds there.

“My wife feeds all these woodland creatures,” Byrne said. “We have a giant squirrel’s nest in our maple tree in same vicinity. It’s like a Disney movie.”