Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 09:05:03 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: "George M. Jett" Subject: Re: Monk parakeet in Germantown MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Keith and Leigh The June 2003 Birding Magazine (Volume 35, Number 3) has some good information about Monk Parakeets. If you don't get the magazine, try www.americanbirding.org. They are real tough birds. For example, they live in Chicago year round. They are originally from South America from central Bolivia and southern Brazil south to central Argentina. Escaped or released birds are the source for all of the populations in North America. If the bird visiting your feeder station is getting enough food to survive, and no predators take it, it is likely to stay a long time. If you can see any bands on the animal you should try to get the number. There may be a registry of captive birds, and you might be able to locate the owner. Monk Parakeets are aggressive, and in captivity usually need to be separate from other pet bird species. They can live a long life, can be good pets if given attention, but like most psittaciformes (parrots and parakeets), are colonial and do better in groups as opposed to single birds. If the bird is habituating to your feeder area you might be able to capture it, and try to find its owner or someone that would want to take care of the bird. If you do catch it and need to find a home for it, let me know, as I know someone that could take it. They do need lots of attention but can make good pets. I hope this helps. George ----- Original Message ----- From: "Keith Gillis" To: Sent: Saturday, October 18, 2003 2:23 PM Subject: [MDOSPREY] Monk parakeet in Germantown > Hello everyone, > > We are new to this list, having subscribed only last month, but we are > already enjoying the wealth of birding information posted here. We > thought you all might be interested in this. > > For the past 2 or 3 weeks we have had almost daily visits to our > backyard feeder by a monk parakeet. Neither of us had ever seen one > before, and we were quite surprised to see it. However, we are now > wishing it would move on, due to it's rather aggressive behavior > toward other birds and it's loud (less than melodious) squawk. We are > curious about other sightings of monk parakeets in Montgomery County, > how prevalent they are, and whether we should be worried that it might > make a home here. Although we have only seen one, we have heard that > they can be very annoying in large numbers. > > Thanks for the great list! > > --Keith and Leigh > > -- > ==================================== > Leigh Partington and Keith Gillis > Germantown, MD > keith.gillis@verizon.net > ==================================== > > ====================================================================== > = > To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com > with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey > ======================================================================= > ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================