Rapid breeding of ring-necked parakeets prompts concern for native British birds

In the past 20 years, the soundscape in the ancient wild, rolling landscape of Richmond Park has been transformed.

- Sandra Laville Sam Jones

Once you would have heard the chirrup of the stonechat, the chirp of the greater spotted woodpecker or the song of the skylark. Today, the auditory power of one bird dominates.The bright green ring-necked parakeet increased 25-fold from 1994-2023 in Britain. They are still mainly based in the skies, parks, and woodlands around London and suburban areas in the south east, but in recent years they have made their way to northern cities including Manchester and Newcastle.

Richmond Park has become a perfect habitat for the birds, with hundreds of trees providing the deep holes in the trunks that parakeets prefer to nest in, and plenty of fruits, berries, buds, and flowers to feed on.

Experts confirmed that parakeets were breeding in London and Kent in the late 1960s, after pet birds, which originated from the Indian subcontinent and Africa, were released or escaped. Climate impacts have helped increase their numbers, and today the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) conservatively puts the population at more than 30,000 birds, in 15,000 breeding pairs, plus an unspecified number of non-breeding individuals.

The auditory dominance is hard to escape, but less clear is what impact this invasive species is having on already threatened native birds such as starlings, song thrush and lesser spotted woodpeckers, as well as bats, in the protected national nature reserve and elsewhere across Britain.