Feral Parrots

Long-time readers of this blog should realize that I have a hobbyist's interest in taxonomy and enjoy trying to identify animals I encounter (or eat)*. Every now and then I come across flocks of feral parrots around Southern California, and I wondered what kinds they were. Well, lo and behold, The California Parrot Project has a very helpful website on feral parrot populations around California, listing 13 different species.

Unfortunately, they all pretty much look the same, green bodies with different colors on their heads. So it's pretty hard to figure out exactly which ones I've been looking at. They do say, though, that the yellow-chevroned parakeet is especially associated with floss silk trees, and sure enough, that's exactly the tree in which a flock had taken up home near City Hall last week. So it's a fairly good bet that that's what I saw there, though I've seen feral parrots in other places, too.

*For those of you who followed the links and may be wondering, I have now seen moose in the wild (two of them in Alaska, along with a bunch of other animals), and I have now eaten goat that was very good. A Nigerian guy at work had gone to a butcher and had one butchered fresh and brought some in; it tasted like very flavorful beef.