A fussy bird moves in

Wilson, the Free Parrot of Prince Street, stops by a Berkeley house twice a day to say hello and grab some chow. Photo by Marilyn Pon, special to the Chronicle Credit: Marilyn PonReaders intrigued by the wild parrots of Telegraph Hill may be interested in Berkeley's Free Parrot of Prince Street. This small yellow- crowned, green Amazon parrot with a metal tethering ring around its right leg was originally one of a pair that were already frequenting the Ashby BART neighborhood when we moved here more than 20 years ago.

We used to wake to their raucous squawking every morning and called them "the two caballeros," after a Disney cartoon of our youth. Other neighbors were not so amused by their noise, but we found them charming and fantasized about relating to them in some way.

Six or seven years ago one of them disappeared. We had witnessed aerial battles between the parrots and a band of crows, but they seemed more bluster than substance and no one was obviously hurt. We had also heard rumors of a red-tailed hawk, but never saw it ourselves. For whatever reason, the remaining parrot, whom we arbitrarily assigned a male gender and the name Wilson, was alone.