Aleksandra Poliakova
Biodiversity – Free-living parrots
November 2011 Cities - new home for exotic creatures
Surprise: Parrots at your doorstep!
Where parrots hang out nowadays
Tropical birds colonize German cities - consequences for local species remaining unclear
Altenburg
P
A scientific take Esther Koch, 26, biology student, is now writing her degree paper trying to cover all these issues. Once in two weeks she goes to the sleeping tree of parakeets near the Römerbad swimming pool, where the birds gather in the evening, and counts them. According to Esther, nowadays their population makes up 1000-1500 birds. Yet, it fluctuates a lot, depending on the season and food. The parakeets consume bark, flowers, leaves, fruit, and in winter they sometimes eat crops that people feed to other birds. Nonetheless, till now they have managed to survive without constant supplementary feeding. They have also developed some tricks to warm up on cold days in winter. “They sit close to each other
According to Nabu, ring-necked parakeets appeared in the small town of Thüringen in 2008 and now live in areas from großer Teich to Schmöllnsche Straße.
PHOTO: DAVID KOCH
Cologne and Düsseldorf
Heidelberg
on the sleeping tree. Besides, they hide in tree holes. Some of them do not survive the winter though, and every spring many dead bodies are to be found,” Esther says.
Passionate about parakeets Bonn is not the only German city colonized by ring-necked parakeets. Cologne, Heidelberg and Wiesbaden have their own populations, too. Since 1996 anyone who observes tropical birds in their town or city, can report that on a special site halsbandsittiche.papageien.org. For Detlev Franz, 45, its founder, one encounter with parrots changed his whole life. “I was just about to take a picture of a duck in the park of Wiesbaden when a lady told me there was a parrot there that I could photograph”. Since then Detlev has taken hundreds of photos of parrots in all German cities. He has also contemplated them and read piles of scientific literature on the topic. Detlev works for the administration of a university and his job has nothing to do with birds. However, more than ten years of research turned him into a German specialist - even biologists and the media call him when they need more information on parakeets. “At first I went to park in Wiesbaden and counted them twice a week. Now I only do it in winter and in summer to see what happens to their population. My work has shift-
ed from field studies to computer,” tematic observation and countDetlev says. Now he is studying ing. The parakeets are not even stuffed birds of ring-necked paracounted in Bonn, in contrast to keets in museums to compare them Cologne, says Esther. Now it is to other parrot species living in she who is in charge of these Germany. “I measure their beaks to time-consuming procedures. But understand whether they compete for her it is more than a duty. with each other or not,” he explains. “I meet them practically every day. Detlev Franz came to Bonn three They are everywhere – once you times to contemplate its exotic get really sensitized about them as dwellers. “They differ from all the I am, you can recognize them by rest because they settle down on hearing when walking around town. buildings instead of trees”, he says. Parakeets are very special – they Some people think that parakeets are playing all the time, like small occupy the holes of local birds and monkeys,” says Esther. She emphashould be shot down as non-natives. Yet, it is not proved that they compete with other species. “They prefer living in parks with tropical plants, many of which can’t be eaten by local birds,” says Detlev Franz. There are lots of theories about how parakeets made Germany their new home. Esther Koch with Renate van den Elzen: research in Museum Koenig Detlev was once told a big group of them must sizes that parakeets are not dangerhave flown away from an aviary or ous for people. “The only danger vehicle while being transported. they pose concerns those who park “Or maybe their new masters just their expensive cars under their thought they produce too much gathering trees and get their lacquer noise and set them free,” he says. surface spoilt,” Esther says laughing. What is also still lacking is sys-
What we can teach wild and other parrots PHOTO: PARROT-PICTURES.BLOGSPOT.COM
The university town has hosted tropical guests since 1972. One of the places where you can see them is the old people’s home near Mönchhofstraße. Their population makes up around 730 birds.
Curious but cautious: a couple of ring-necked parakeets hiding in a tree-hole in the park of Cologne
Talking or not?
Grey Parrots -
Rheinland is believed to have the biggest number of parakeets. The green exotic birds can be seen in Düsseldorf and its neighboring towns Neuss, Meerbusch and in Krefeld. According to Nabu, their population in Düsseldorf makes up about 1200. In Cologne it totals 2500 birds. Their favorite places in the city by the Rhine are Rheinpark Köln, the Botanical Garden, the Kölner Zoo. There is also a group of Alexandrine parakeets living here.
One of the reasons why parrots became such beloved pets was their ability to imitate human speech. Ornithologist Renate van den Elzen from Museum Koenig Bonn discloses in her interview the mystery of speaking birds. the best speakers among birds
Why can parrots imitate speech? Firstly, parrots are very intelligent, like ravens, and secondly, they have the physical ability to produce human sounds. What is this ability connected with and what other sounds can they reproduce? Parrots, like other songbirds, have numerous muscles in the syrinx, their speech organ. Besides, they have good ear and memory, which is why they can not only repeat words taught to them by people but also imitate different sounds of surroundings.
This means that they can not only reproduce sounds but also see logical connections? To a certain degree, they do. For instance, in our family we had a Grey Parrot, who imitated the sound of pouring water when he was thirsty. Grey parrots are generally regarded as the most speech-talented ones. They can imitate sounds so accurately you can even recognize the person who is speaking. Is it possible to teach ring-necked parakeets to talk? Many parakeets possess the ability to imitate people’s speech. As for ring-necked parakeets, nobody has tried to teach them to. In order for them to learn to talk, you have to take the nestlings very early from the nest,
Mannheim The population of parakeets figures up to 400 birds. Their favorite places are Luisenpark and surroundings of the chemical enterprise BASF. Stuttgart
PHOTO: ALEKSANDRA POLIAKOVA
arrots are your run-ofthe-mill pets in Germany. How about free-living parrots though? It turns out that some species, for instance ring-necked parakeets, can live in the local ecosystem none the worse than in Africa and Asia, their native continents. Andrey Karmeliuk, 22, from Ukraine, studies computer science at the University of Bonn. Biology never used to be his cup of tea. However, after he arrived in Bonn in April 2011 and moved in the dormitory in the Nordstadt, he unwillingly became a permanent observer of parakeets living right outside his room. “One day, I just looked out of the window and could not believe my eyes – sitting on the green branches of the tree were three parrots.” Since then Andrey has had an opportunity to get to know the tropical creatures better. Some of them even landed a few times on his window sill. Yet, his first delight about the exotic guests soon vanished. “In the beginning, it was fun. But in fact, they make immense noise, so it is not very nice to have them as neighbors,” the young Ukrainian says. The poplar tree near Andrey’s dormitory is not the only place in Bonn where ring-necked parakeets, also known as by the Latin name of Psitaccula krameri, are found. They can be seen near LVR-Klinik, Poppelsdorf palace and in the district of Tannenbusch. The green exotic birds were first noticed in Bonn in 1979. And there still remain a lot of open questions about them, namely, what makes them so adaptable and what are the effects of their presence on local species?
The capital of Baden-Würrtemberg can boast of hosting freeliving Yellow-headed Amazons, which are considered to be an endangered species. They have been living near the Wilhelma zoo since 1986. According to Nabu, their population makes up around 41 birds. Wiesbaden According to Detlev Franz, the population of ring-necked parakeets now makes up 1500. The Biebrich Schloßpark is the place with the highest density of their population in Germany. There is also a group of Alexandrine parakeets living here. • Want to see the whole map of parrots? Visit www.papageien.org/ df/Df_ale8c.htm
for they should accept humans as substitutes for parents. Only then will they try to communicate back in the language they are being addressed. Of course, they are learning to talk all life through, yet, the awareness that it is people whom the bird should imitate seems very important.
USEFUL LINKS • www.papageien.org • www.nabu.de • www.uni-bonn.de/~ekoch • www.papageienfonds.de • www.papageienfreunde.com • www.papageien-portal.de • www.papageien-und-sittiche.de • www.parrots.org