californians.. ever get flocks of Parrots??

[meow mix]

these were like huge, green things. with bright red heads.
and they were LOUD! 50 of em at least.
a wild flock. not lost pets or anything.

this was in LA btw.. very urban area and i was just like, what the hell.
parrots?

[realFedUp]

1. Escapees....I like them but they are noisy.

[miss_kitty]

2. They started as lost pets

or came from lost pets

[HEyHEY]

3. We get flocks of these up North

[meow mix]

8. lol

didnt see any of those thank goodness.

[dogtag]

4. Yep, there are tons of them in Palos Verdes, but they

are not really parrots. I can't think of the correct name right this minute, but they are slightly smaller than true parrots. They do flock together and get pretty loud.

[nini]

15. do you live in PV?

I'm in Torrance :hi:

[dogtag]

29. Yep, I'm in PV...hi, neighbor!

[shanti]

21. conures probably

they are smaller than parrots, and very noisy.

[dogtag]

28. Yep, that's it. (n/t)

[frylock]

5. yes..

I used to see a large flock of them in El Cajon. I would see them in the morning and in the afternoon gathered in eucalyptus trees. I don't know where they went during the day, but they were loud as hell.

[maveric]

14. I see them in El Cajon all the time.

They hang in the trees on the grounds of the convalescent hospital I work at.

[deadeye]

6. you will see a few dead ones under the palm trees

after a hard freeze. Seems they cant take cold temps. We had them in Oceanside , CA also.

[meow mix]

7. ok ty. all we have here is sparrows, crows and pigeons..

and occasional starlings although most of those have died off too.

and such a huge flock of parrots was totally out of place. kids were running up from all over to see.

[carpetbagger]

9. Sounds like Red-crowned Parrots

They do occur here in Texas, in the Brownsville-McAllen area, as hybridized populations of escaped but established birds mixed with never-captured birds who held on or strayed from their native population bases farther south in Mexico.

Southern California, like other areas of the southernmost United States, have large populations of caged birds, as well as large numbers of appropriate tropical plants that serve as food sources and nesting sites, and thus develop naturalized populations of parrots.

They prefer the urban areas. That's where they can find some safety in numbers, some protection from environmental extremes and predation, and that's where people plant the stuff they like to eat, as well as feeders.

I think the California Bird Records Committee says that at least one species (I think the Red-Crowned) has become "permanently" naturalized (my sarcasm by putting this in quotes is that previously recognized as "permanently naturalized", such as Crested Myna in British Columbia, have disappeared).

[Ladyhawk]

16. If I saw a pic, I could tell you what species, for sure.

Yes, I do snakes AND parrots. :)

If the birds have long tails in relation to their bodies, they're probably conures: Wagler's, mitred or cherry-headed. If they have shortish tails in relation to their bodies, they are probably Amazon parrots: Mexican red-heads, lilac-crowned or red-lored. If they were exceptionally big, they may have been military macaws.

Most conures are smaller than most Amazons. And most Amazons are smaller than most macaws. :)

I don't recall there being such an animal as a "red-crowned parrot."

I do remember reading about a flock of cherry-headed and blue-crowned conures in SF. There are all kinds of escaped parrots in the LA area, though, so they could be practically any kind of escaped pets-gone-feral.

[shanti]

22. yes! san francisco has several large flocks

of parrots and conures. i've seen them!

[HawkerHurricane]

10. Several Stories about Los Angeles Parrots

And yes, I've seen and heard them, in Canoga Park and Pasadena.

Legend 1:
Pet Store Owner going out of business sets fire to his own store, but first frees the animals, including a number of parrots.
Probably false, pet stores usually have only 2-3 birds per species, not a viable breeding population.

Legend 2: Bush Gardens Los Angeles closed down, freeing all thier birds instead of selling/donating them.
Definitely false, I know several pet stores who got the untrained parrots, the trained ones (and all other display birds) went to the LA Zoo, except the flamingoes which ended up in the San Diego Zoo.

[chaska]

11. I saw a large flock in Pasadena about a month ago. eom

[slutticus]

12. Did they look like this?

[Ladyhawk]

17. Those are cherry-headed conures.

That's probably a female on the left and a male on the right. I got to where I could accurately sex most species of parrots by bone structure alone. Females of most species have rounder heads and smaller bones. Males have bigger, sometimes "square" heads and larger bones.

Mitred conures are bigger and don't have the extensive red shoulder patch.

[maveric]

13. They would perch in my lemon tree a couple of times a week, for years.

And they were damn loud.

[Ladyhawk]

19. There are two main groups of conures: Aratinga and Pyrrhura.

The Aratinga conures are LOUD LOUD LOUD!!!!!! Cherry-headed conures fall into the Aratinga group.

[haele]

18. Mexican Red Headed Amazon...

GREEN-CHEEKED AMAZON. Amazona viridigenalis Cassin. (Also known as the Mexican Red Head Amazon). From coastal Northeastern Mexico, in eastern Nuevo Léon, Tamaulipas, eastern San Luis Potosi, eastern Hidalgo and northern Veracruz. Length about 33 cm. Body green; forehead, lores, and upper part of the head bright red; occiput to nape blue; cheeks iridescent green; outer vanes of primaries blue, green toward base; red at the base of the outer vanes of the first five secondaries; tail yellowish green towards the tip; iris golden; bill yellowish; feet, legs pale grey. Feeds on fruits, seeds, nuts, berries, buds and flowers.

The flocks you see in California are considered wild and endangered, and any young found in the wild are not to be caught or sold as pets; only licenced parrot breeders are allowed to sell them.
I've seen them in San Diego county since the late 1970's

From what I've heard the 411 about these flocks is this: over the last 50 years, they've followed agricultural greenbelts eastwards up into California; they especially love pecan trees, citrus, sycamore (which is actually a native tree of northern Mexico and the Southwest), eucalyptus, and mulberry. The Mexican (and Californian) farmers have used lots of Eucalyptus as a sun/windbreak for their fields since the early 40's; the increase in corporate agriculture has lead to their spread throughout the Southwest.

Many other types of parrots - amazons, macaws, parrolettes, conures - and I've once saw a cockatiel - will join these flocks for protection, however I've never seen "crossbreeding" amongst the flocks other than with other Amazon type parrots.

Haele

[Ladyhawk]

20. Mexican red-heads and lilac-crowns are very similar.

But the Mexican red-heads (green cheeks) tend to be more brightly colored and have more red on their heads. Lilac-crowns have more lilac than red. :)

Once common throughout the Pacific region of Mexico, populations of the lilac-crowned amazon parrot (Amazona finschi) have declined sharply over the last two decades, principally due to capture in the pet trade. The lilac-crowned parrot is one of the most common Mexican parrots in illegal cross-border trade with the US and is regularly confiscated by both Mexican and US authorities. Coupled with low reproductive rates, habitat loss and degradation, and insufficient domestic protections, continued international trade spells disaster for this species. Currently, only 7,000-10,000 individuals remain in the wild.

[meow mix]

25. now that sounds like a candidate!

are they bigger than conures? these looked distinctly larger than conures.
and they were wild i tell ya! not some ragged escapees but a very large thriving family.

[Ladyhawk]

27. I'll post a pic of a Mexican red-headed Amazon parrot

And yes, most Amazons are larger than most conures. And most macaws are larger than most Amazons. It gets weird, though, because a Patagonian conure is larger than a Hahn's macaw. :) The above Amazon parrot is a good-sized bird, about as large as my double yellowhead, shown here:

[A-Schwarzenegger]

23. From this thing about a flagpole-sitter in L.A., seventy feet up...

He took his shirt off and rocked in his chair and drank his coffee and observed at his feet the joust of the world and the wind. Toward the ocean, rising deeper in the blue sky, a tan plastic grocery bag tumbled like a ghost. One lone gull fought the wind to a standstill, then gave up and turned and shot swooping the other way as if down a slide. Joe watched rows of palm trees stagger loopily, like stoned giraffes trying to stay in line. Or dinosaurs. Or--in fact, they reminded him of the very pole upon which he perched; he felt like a monkey up a palm tree himself. He made some monkey sounds which sounded more like a pig and a burro. He smiled and breathed deep. The subtle motion of the pole had grown cradle-like, soothing.

In an almost contemplative state, he witnessed a local marvel he had heard about but had never seen. In fact, he had dismissed the reports as urban myth. Now, first spotting the creatures miles away, he thought them to be large confetti, or balloons, bright green angular balloons freed in a horizontal rush against the pool of the sky, but when they disappeared en masse into the top of a swaying palm tree way up there close to Sunset, he remembered the stories about the flocks of wild parrots. They were still too far away to be sure, but watching the birds burst from that palm and scatter straight toward him across the distance, he feared a Hitchcock scenario, that he was violating some territorial imperative, that they were hopped up on the Santa Ana and about to swarm him with claws and hook-like beaks flashing and tearing. However, they passed ten feet above him in a great dazzling manic flail of green wings and red crowns--two dozen of the beings easily--and nestled in a eucalyptus tree over on Windsor, where they commenced to hop about and eat leaves and make a racket of squawks and screams which sounded like a gang of high-strung cowards trying to sound tough, with bewildering results.

[no name no slogan]

24. As long as they don't have bad new-wave hair and play synth-pop

watch out, somebody could give them a record contract. :o

[meow mix]

26. lol synthpop r0olz! =p

i luv that stuff

[ronnykmarshall]

30. All the time

They're so cool.

In San Francisco there are flocks of them flying around. Near my old office on Battery Street there was a park and the trees were full of parrots.

When I first moved to LA I saw a flock of sparrows with a couple of parakeets hangin' with them.