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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: March 2006

Ring-necked parakeets might take over London

Tower of London ravens (Kim Bartlett)

 

LONDON––Ring-necked parakeets, brought to Britain from India as exotic pets in Victorian times, formed feral populations in London in the early 20th century. They struggled through the cold British winters for most of 100 years before global warming changed the climate in their favor.


The United Kingdom Phenology Network, described by Independent environmental editor Michael McCarthy as “a massive database of the timing of natural events, such as oak leaves appearing, frogs sprawning, and swallows returning,” has established that biological spring comes to Britain three weeks earlier now than 40 years ago.


Despite the significance of this finding to agriculture, forestry, and species conservation, the British government recently cut off funding for the Phenology Network headquarters at Monks Wood, in Cambridgeshire, and also axed the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology research stations at Winfrith, in Dorset, and Banchory, near Aberdeen.


Though the Tony Blair administration appears reluctant to learn more about global warming, ring-necked parakeets have taken advantage of it to become one of the “Top 20 most spotted birds” in much of Britain, and one of the 10 most-spotted species in parts of London, according to annual counts directed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.


“The RSPB predicts that the parakeet population will more than treble in the next four years,” reported Frances Booth of the Daily Telegraph on January 23, 2006. “They have been seen in almost every English county, and occasionally in Scotland and Wales. Last year they were recorded in 21 of London’s 32 boroughs.”


As many as 12,000 ring-necked parakeets now inhabit London, according to RSPB estimates, 7,000 of them in the largest colony and 4,000 in the next largest. The major colonies show signs of converging.


“Despite rising numbers, there is little evidence of the birds causing damage, apart from one incident at a vineyard,” Booth continued.


In Britain, ring-necked parakeets are protected under the Wildlife & Countryside Act. As in the U.S. however, crows and other corvids are not protected, and are often targeted, even for alleged offenses they have nothing to do with.


Climatic change, for example, while enabling parakeets and other southern immigrants to extend their range, is also associated with declines in birds who prefer a cooler climate. Impervious to the mountain of evidence assembled by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and other institutions that points toward climatic factors, the monthly magazine Sporting Shooter in February 2005 blamed magpies, who are members of the crow family, and offered a prize to the reader who killed the most magpies during the next five months.


Marie Woolf of The Independent disclosed a day later that Tower of London raven master and Yeoman Warder Derrick Coyle shoots as many as 12 crows a week.


“Coyle shoots birds who look ill, with dull eyes and lank ruffled feathers, because he fears they could spread disease to the ravens,” wrote Woolf. “He also targets the birds who lead the flock, to try to persuade them to disperse. Crows who look as though they have eaten poisoned rats are also shot, because if they die they would be devoured by their larger carnivorous cousins. The raven master collects their bodies as they fall out of the trees…The secret culling, disclosed to The Independent under the Freedom of Information Act, takes place early in the morning, before the tourists arrive.”


Supposedly Coyle shoots crows to protect the ravens in his care. According to legend, the British monarchy will fall if ravens ever leave the Tower.


Crows are no more popular in Moscow and Tokyo, but those cities practice much less violent control methods.


After years of shooting crows and trying to scare them off with noisemakers, to little avail, Moscow now employs falconers to fly three falcons and two eagles in the vicinity of Red Square and the Kremlin.


Tokyo found in a study of 1,300 families’ waste disposal habits that while crows readily peck into white garbage bags to seek food, they seem to leave yellow bags alone.