How this tropical bird conquered our cities

In the Middle Ages, Kings and Princes liked to collect books and menagerie animals to testify to their power and prestige. Jean, Duke of Berry (1340-1416), was not to be outdone. His personal library included more than a hundred richly illuminated manuscripts. Her menagerie consisted of swans, bears, hinds, dromedaries, ostriches or even … green parakeets, as evidenced by several illustrations of the works of the Duke Berrichon, or the pavement tiles of the ducal residence from Mehun-sur-Yèvre (Cher). This small slender parrot is then described by the encyclopedias of the time than green in color, the beak and red legs – even if there is also a rare variant, the Lutino, in bright yellow plumage, visible in The very rich hours of the Duke of Berry.

It was not until the 20th century that the collar parakeet, originally from the forests of Africa and India, began to multiply in the flyers and cages of our houses. Should we be surprised that some of them have succeeded in recovering freedom? As early as 1974, the first observations of parakeets in nature took place in the Paris region, then in various French cities. Consequently, several thousand individuals have acclimatized to our urban parks, notably taking advantage of the seeds of their feeders. They are also one of the rare volatiles to revel in the fruits of the chestnut tree and their thorny capsules. A gift inherited from the world of the tropics, where these birds neutralize toxins of this kind of food by also swallowing clay.

Greek, the parakeets appreciate the heights of the plane trees and the cavities of their trunks. With broods of 2 to 6 eggs, laid in February or March, the population of this exotic species will continue to grow, unless Hulotte hawks and owls, predators of our regions, are doing their office. The time that a new ecological balance is found.