Winter 2003

Monk Parakeets: Urban Outsiders

The bird's squawk sounds like a cross between a chirp and the hee-haw screech of a rusty pump. Its bright green plumage clashes with the dignified church steeples and ivy-covered bricks of its Hyde Park neighborhood. For 22 years, feral monk parakeets have lived in this southern part of Chicago, draping their twiggy nests over tree branches, electrical poles, roof rafters, and satellite dishes. This raucous caucus of about 200 birds is the coldest, and perhaps the oldest, colony of monk parakeets in the United States. But should this species, introduced from South America, live wild in Illinois?

The monk parakeet, also known as the Quaker or gray-headed parakeet or parrot, was imported for the pet trade during the late sixties and early seventies. From 1968 to 1972, for example, more than 64,000 were brought to the United States from their native Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia. Since enactment of the Wild Bird Conservation Act in 1992, however, it has been illegal to import wild members of the species.

First seen locally at a Blue Island, Illinois, bird feeder in 1968, a pair of monks nested, hatched a few offspring, and disappeared in 1970. Three years later, a compound nest was discovered in Hinsdale. That same year, 1973, the Hyde Park colony got its start. The birds probably escaped from pet stores and residences, accord-ing to Stephen Pruett-Jones and other biologists at the University of Chicago who have studied the birds. The rumor that they escaped from a shipping crate at O'Hare has not been substantiated and was probably appropriated from New York, where an escape at Kennedy airport was documented in 1967. Some defenestrations may not have been accidental. Not everyone appreciates the birds' constant loud chatter, which consists of 11 kinds of shrill calls and whistles in addition to local sounds they imitate.

About a foot in length, slightly larger than a cockatiel, the monk parakeet is a flamboyant, highly social bird. The monastic reference in its scientific name, Myiopsitta monachus, derives from the hood of green feathers that covers its head and neck, set off by a gray face and yellowish breast. The rest of the bird, whether male or female, is chartreuse green except for its orange beak and a fringe of blue feathers on its tail and wings.

The Hyde Park colony has survived Chicago's nastiest weather, a significant feat since the bird originates in the temperate, dry lowlands of South America. This is the harshest climate the birds survive anywhere in the world, according to Pruett-Jones. They do exist further north, in Amsterdam and Paris, for example, and during the 1980s they bred in Montreal, but only in the Chicago area do they currently withstand windstorms and ice baths, rain, snow, hail, and temperatures far below zero.

Some farmers and conservationists wonder whether a bird that can adapt from Argentina to Illinois may become as common as the starling, which increased from 120 individuals to 200 million in a century, and wreak havoc with American crops as well as local species. Monk parakeets have fed on fields of wheat and corn in South America and fruit orchards in Florida.

Such concerns appear so far to be unsupported, yet many conservationists remain wary. Though the parakeets are tenacious survivors, many outlying colonies have remained small or disappeared. Monk parakeets fed in cornfields in Kane County for five years and then disappeared, says Bob Montgomery, a compiler for the Illinois Spring Bird Count. Two pairs built a nest on a grain elevator in Carlyle, Illinois, 250 miles southwest of Chicago, and have been there for five years without expanding. Area birder Dan Kassebaum said he has seen three birds there, and he has never heard of more than four being sighted since 1997.

Michael Avery, a biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), asserts that they pose no threat. "There is no documentation of their causing damage to cereal crops in the U.S., and no indication that they are displacing other birds. They are not cavity nesters, like starlings, which displace woodpeckers. Overall, there seems to be no competition for food or nest space."

Between 1970 and 1975, a national eradication effort by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the USDA eliminated them from most Northeastern and Midwestern states. They have since re-established themselves in several areas and continue to thrive in Florida, Texas, Connecticut, and New Jersey, as well as Illinois. States vary in their regulatory approaches — Illinois currently has no restrictions against the birds.

When the USDA proposed to eradicate the Hyde Park colony in 1988, outraged residents formed a protest group and a legal defense fund. The agency backed off when the citizens, led by long-time bird advocate Doug Anderson of Hyde Park, demanded a public hearing. Rather than produce evidence of crop damage, the agency dropped the eradication plan.

In 1996, Pruett-Jones predicted the population would grow exponentially if left unchecked. During a study he supervised from 1992 to 1995, the Hyde Park population tripled. But subsequent counts show the population holding fairly steady at about 200 birds, according to Mathew Leibold, also a professor at the University of Chicago.

Chicago's parakeets have built nests on electric transformer poles, braces under the El tracks, and (shown here) on the back of a satellite dish. Photo by Joe Nowak.

Mark Spreyer, director of the Stillman Nature Center in Barrington and an avid student of the monk parakeet, notes that monk populations tend to control themselves because only a certain number of birds breed each year. The proportion of breeding birds may vary with environmental conditions, he says. Spreyer adds that the principle cause of mortality among monks is nests falling. Re-searchers are not certain whether the Hyde Park colony could survive without supplemental birdseed. From mid December through February, according to a 2000 study published in The Condor, the birds eat nothing but store-bought seed and the occasional frozen holly berry.

Another secret to the birds' success in colder urban and suburban areas lies in their nests and social nature. Unlike others of the 350-odd parrot species, monk parakeets weave free-standing nests wherever they find appropriate materials and supports, usually as close as possible to the nest where they hatched. Each spring, they pluck twigs from trees and vines from chain-link fences to weave compound structures that often house several family groups, each entering through a separate hole in the bottom. The communal nest keeps them warm and sheltered year-round, as they do not migrate. The birds forage as well as live together and use a sentinel system by which a lookout parakeet shrieks a warning when a bird of prey approaches.

Monk parakeets have an unfortunate habit of building on electrical poles, especially around heat-generating transformers. Commonwealth Edison fears the nests will cause fires or power outages, so the company routinely removes the nests, says company spokesperson Meg Amato. She cites only one instance of damage caused by a nest, a fire in 1996, but says "anytime we find a nest on a pole, we take it down." The company formed an agreement with the Greater Chicago Cage Bird Club whereby established members may adopt displaced parakeets, says club member David Hynes.

A combination of local expansion and separate releases has resulted in nests of monk parakeets as far north as Zion, to the west in DuPage County near the Bensenville police station, and in the Calumet City and Wolf Lake area to the south.

Some have suggested that monk parakeets could occupy the niche vacated by the Carolina parakeet, the only parrot indigenous to North America. Extinct from the wild since 1913, the Carolina parakeet had much in common with the monk parakeet. It frequented bottomland hardwood forests in the southeastern United States and lived as far north as Connecticut and at least as far west as Illinois.

Like the monk parakeet, the Carolina parakeet was a colorful, small parrot that lived on an eclectic diet of seeds, buds, and fruits and was kept as a caged bird. Both birds have tolerated extreme weather conditions, and both have been hunted by farmers who thought their crops were threatened. The biggest behavioral difference between the two species is that the Carolina parakeet was a tree-cavity dweller. The clearing of forests and the introduction of European honeybees, which competed with the birds for hollow trees, reduced the numbers of Carolina parakeets.

 "There is a niche that the monk parakeet could fill," said Spreyer. "Maybe not the same one as the Carolina parakeet, but the monk parakeet is well adapted to this area. I just can't help but admire these transplanted survivors."