Monk parakeet nest in Leonia causes power outage for 3,400
Sunday, December 9, 2012 at 11:20 
Monk parakeets in Edgewater NJ garding their nest. Image by Hope Abrams.LEONIA — These are tough times for the wayward band of monk parakeets that have nested in the trees and utility poles in and around Edgewater for three decades.
Edgewater rousted some of the birds last Monday, when a crew hired by the borough cut down several trees along Route 5 so they could rebuild a retaining wall. That ruffled the feathers of some bird-loving residents, members of the Edgewater Parrot Society, who on Thursday managed to stop the project so they could place nesting platforms in a park nearby.
But the problems for the parakeets persist. On Saturday, they were blamed by PSE&G for an overnight power outage that affected some 3,400 customers. Early Saturday morning, a nest built atop a utility pole on Fort Lee Road in Leonia caused a transformer to short-circuit and lines to topple, according to PSE&G spokeswoman Nancy Tucker.
The four-hour outage began around 12:45 a.m. and affected customers mainly in Leonia, Englewood Cliffs, and Teaneck, she said.
Tucker said the pole was outside the entrance to Overpeck Park, which has become one of several favorite nesting place for the distinctive birds, with their bright green feathers and blue-tipped wings.
"They build their nests around the pole and it causes the equipment to fail," she said. "In this case, they basically tripped out two circuits and six wires came down."
No one is quite sure how the monk parakeets, also known as Quaker parrots, came to call Edgewater and its environs home. The birds, who grow to be a foot long, are native to the warmer, tropical climate of Latin America. But they were first spotted in Edgewater in the 1970s.
Their nests can be quite large, as high as four feet. Once they are wrapped around a utility pole, the heat builds up around the electrical devices and causes the circuit to short, Tucker said.
PSE&G routinely climbs the poles and removes the nests, but the hearty birds invariably find another transformer to call home.