Entries by City Parrots (1314)
Green vs. gold
Updated on Friday, February 3, 2012 at 12:21 by City Parrots
Constitutional Court to rule on open pit gold mine along the Nicaraguan border.
Tracking a parakeet invasion
Some Hyde Parkers love their bright green plumage. Others find their squawking a nuisance. Many remain simply enchanted by the serendipity of their existence in this chilly northern climate.
One way or another, every Hyde Park resident seems to have an opinion about the neighborhood’s population of feral monk parakeets, the birds that escaped domesticity and first took up residence in large communal nests built on electricity poles and tree limbs in the 1960s. Now, more than 40 years later, they’re finding new homes all over the Chicago area.
A team of scientists from three Chicago universities estimate there are now at least 500 nests around the city, and have found locations as many as 20 miles away from Hyde Park.
Scientists hope parrots will teach humans the secrets of language
Macaws bred far from tropics during pre-Columbian times
Inhabitants of Paquimé, a large settlement that flourished from 1200 to 1450 in what is now northern Chihuahua, raised scarlet macaws more than 500 kilometers north of the animals’ tropical homes, say anthropology graduate student Andrew Somerville of the University of California, San Diego and his colleagues. Ancient macaw breeders harvested the birds’ vibrant red, blue and yellow feathers for use in ceremonial garb and to trade with Native American societies in the southwestern United States, Somerville’s team proposes in an upcoming Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.