The Wild Parrots of Barcelona

I really loved the documentary movie The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, because it gave me a a glimpse of my home town, San Francisco, as an ecosystem including interactions between people and birds. Mark Bittner told his story in a book, and the film gave rise to a new partnership between him and the filmmaker.

When we were in Barcelona, I saw similar parrots in the parks, nesting in palm trees, flying about, and I thought they were wonderful: colorful, cute, charming. But when we were at dinner, Blas mentioned that they are in fact an invasive species and that their aggression was causing harm to the local ecosystem. This made me realize that I had been looking at them from the perspective of a tourist and that the locals might have a different point of view (just as they might see the tourists as an invasive species with a negative impact on their ecosystem!)

This BBC story about the wild parrots of Barcelona here tells how the population of Quaker Parrots (cotorras, as they are commonly called in spanish) has grown to a couple of thousand since the seventies. One problem is that they eat every kind of plant, and have devoured some farmers' tomato crops! Apparently the "urban parrot" phenomenon (birds native to South America establishing colonies and thriving in New Northern climes) has been observed in San Diego and Los Angeles, Brooklyn, London, and many other cities. Some are worried about it because they compete with native birds, but others see this new niche as a way some parrots, which are threatened with extinction in their native lands, might survive in new places

A very informative site about urban parrots is City Parrots, which documents the survival of the very showy Scarlet Macaw in Holland, as well as collecting stories about parrots from around the world. I'll try to put up some pictures later.