Seeing this parakeet flying around was a huge surprise. I've never seen them in England before, although the population has apparently been growing here since the 70s. We were walking around Buckingham Palace, and I heard a lot of high-pitched chatter above and saw all these green birds perching on the Queen Victoria statue and flying around the area. It was really surprising. I was used to seeing such birds flying around in the wild in India, a type of parrot, I thought, and I assumed they were a tropical bird, so it was quite a mystery as to why there was this huge flock of brightly-coloured green birds. Good old Google, I looked up this phenomenon and learned that sure enough, the rose-ringed parakeet (a.k.a. ring-necked parakeet) is a case of yet another bird brought from somewhere that was either let loose or escaped. And I should note that parakeets and parrots are actually from the same family, so thinking they were small green parrots was not totally off-base.
The day I saw them initially, I didn't have my good camera with me, so we had gone back to Buckingham Palace again so I could find them. The contrast of them against the gold Victoria statue looks quite striking, but unfortunately, they were not to be found. So we went back to St James Park--where I eventually photographed so many of those ducks and geese that I have posted here. As we were walking along the pond's edge, we noticed a huge crowd, and when I looked to see what they were doing, I realised that it was a huge crowd feeding those parakeets! What was really perplexing about it is how blatantly people were disregarding the sign telling the public not to feed the squirrels or the parakeets, as you'll see in the photo. The crowd had at least 20-30 people standing right where the sign is, not only feeding them, but even taking direction from what seemed to be some
kind of a tour guide who was giving assistance on how to feed them and get them posed for selfies with the birds. At least it wasn't bears or mating moose/caribou/elk at home where people get attacked and injured, but I just wish people would get the concept of not feeding the wildlife.
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