gavagai
New member
My understanding is that what generally happened with our feral parrots is truck accidents and mass escapes from pet stores while unloading birds would lead to several wild-caught birds of the same species escaping at once, and those would then establish feral populations. Have any of you seen The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill? San Francisco actually has a mixed flock of mitreds and cherry heads. Several of them are becoming mixed as well. The flock also had a lone blue-crown for years, which may have been an escaped or released but wild-caught personal pet.
One place I wonder about is Scottsdale, Arizona. You see a lot of blue and lutino mutations in pictures of the feral peach-faced lovebirds there, suggesting that either the original birds included some captive bred ones, some peoples' pets subsequently joined the flock, and/or there's not as much predation against those colors as you'd find in the true wild.
And yes, Southern California and South Florida have two of the highest diversities of feral parrots flocks; though most of those flocks are incredibly localized. Unlike the quakers (and Scottsdale's lovebirds) which once they get established roam everywhere, most feral species find there's enough food in a relatively small area (such as Telegraph Hill) that they don't need to leave it.
Of course in all those places, a bird may be escaped as well. There was someone in Killeen who lost his green quaker parrot, a bird he's likely never to find again unless someone 1. sees it looking lost in their yard, 2. doesn't assume it's one of the wild parrots and decided to capture it, 3. it lets itself be captured, and 4. nobody tells them that birds matching exactly that description which live feral in the Austin metro area (which connects via an unbroken chain of development to the Killeen one).
Is it not a conure?
