In the past 20 years, the soundscape in the ancient wild, rolling landscape of Richmond Park has been transformed. Once you would have heard the chirrup of the stonechat, the chirp of the greater spotted woodpecker or the song of the skylark. Today, the auditory power of one bird dominates.
The bright green ring-necked parakeet increased 25-fold from 1994-2023 in the UK. They are still mainly based in the skies, parks, and woodlands around London and suburban areas in the south east, but in recent years they have made their way to northern cities including Manchester and Newcastle.
Richmond Park, with its rolling hectares, has become a perfect habitat for the birds, with hundreds of ancient trees providing the deep holes in the trunks that parakeets prefer to nest in, and plenty of fruits, berries, buds, and flowers to feed on.
The sound of parakeets recorded in Richmond Park
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Parakeets first appeared in the UK in the late 1960s after pet birds, which originated from the Indian subcontinent and Africa, were released or escaped. Climate impacts have helped increase their numbers, and today the British Trust for Ornithology conservatively puts the population at more than 30,000 birds, in 15,000 breeding pairs, plus an unspecified number of non-breeding individuals.
The auditory dominance is hard to escape, but less clear is what impact this invasive species is having on already threatened native birds such as starlings, song thrush and lesser spotted woodpeckers, as well as bats, in the protected national nature reserve and elsewhere across the UK.
Paddy McCleave, who works with the Songbird Survival organisation, says the volume of UK-based research on the impact of ring-necked parakeets is limited and needs to be updated. However, their rapid expansion has sparked concern among scientists and conservationists.
“One of the impacts of these birds is the competition they create for our native birds. Their presence, as woodpecker-sized birds, at garden feeders can cause alarm among native birds, subsequently reducing foraging behaviour and potentially increasing stress.”
In other European countries there is some evidence that they have a negative impact on other species. In 2010 Belgian scientists looked at the parakeets’ impact on the nuthatch, a small grey and rust coloured bird which, like the parakeet, lives in mature woodlands, parks and large gardens with old trees, using their cavities for nesting and abundant food, and found that a third of the population of nuthatches may be at risk from the increase in parakeet numbers. However, David Noble, of the British Trust for Ornithology, says that when they repeated the Belgian research in 2011 they found no evidence of a significant impact through competition on nuthatch populations or those of any other cavity-nesting species.
David Noble of BTO talks about the parakeets in Richmond Park, which have been a feature for some years. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian
Seven years ago in Spain, where populations of parakeets have also increased massively across some of the biggest cities, researchers investigating the 81% decline in numbers of the noctule bat in a park in Seville – the largest colony in Europe – observed parakeets chasing the much smaller bats out of their nests.
The researchers also found 20 dead and two injured noctules under nest sites, some with beak cuts on their muscle and bones.
Authorities are looking at what action can be taken. In the UK culling has been considered but never carried out because of the risk of public controversy. The most recent risk assessment drawn up by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was in 2011 and warned “the potential for impact on economic activities, (agriculture) and native fauna is high”.
The birds, the risk assessment found, could be a threat to other species, could spread disease, have caused significant damage to vineyards, and have the potential to raid crops and orchards in the UK.
At that point, the population of parakeets was around 5000. Uncontrolled, the parakeet population has multiplied to 30,000 birds in the UK, and any control methods are likely to be far more costly, difficult and, potentially, more controversial.
In Madrid officials are running a humane slaughter programme to control large numbers of parakeets after their numbers reached 13,000 in 2019.
The Spanish cull is being carried out through a variety of measures including shooting with air rifles, using nets and traps, and sterilising eggs in nests.
Defra officials have acted in the past to control another species of parakeets, the monk, a native of South America, after the birds appeared in large numbers on the Isle of Dogs in London 24 years ago. Officials cited the threat the birds posed to power lines as a reason for instituting control measures.
Amy Leedale, lecturer in behavioural ecology at the University of Salford, said it was too early to say whether parakeets posed the same threat in the UK as has been suggested in other European countries.
“To understand adaptation and impacts on native species we do need long-term field data to build a complete picture and understand what is going on,” said Leedale. “It is not something you can understand in just a year of field work.”
