In Britain, Game of Cat and Mouse Breaks Out Over Monk Parakeet

The monk parakeet has found its way from its Latin American homeland to northern cities around the world. Image by: Stefan Le Breton 

Authorities Move to Eliminate an Invader, But Supporters Rally to Its Defense.

LONDON—Nobody knows how these birds got here from their Latin American homeland, or how they survive in a climate more suited to hot drinks and rubber boots than to tropical wildlife.

But the government considers Britain's feral monk parakeets—estimated population: between 55 and 87—a menace that requires radical control measures.

British authorities have compiled a long rap sheet of parakeet offenses, alleging that they are a potential threat to fruit crops and public safety. The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, or Defra, is worried that the large, communal nests the birds sometimes build on electric pylons could cause power cuts. Not making life easier for the parakeets is their neighbor-rumbling screech.

So since 2008, the agency says it has spent £192,000 ($305,000)—or roughly $3,500 per bird—to capture the invaders with traps or "whoosh nets" and to prevent their eggs from hatching.

On occasion, Defra agents have resorted to shooting the parakeets—at times, not very effectively. An agency report details one cull in which two birds "appeared to be hit but without the pellets penetrating." The report indicated that the agency would try "modifying the cartridges" to achieve a better result without jeopardizing public safety.

Their Teflon qualities aside, the parakeets have other protectors: a flock of activist supporters who have proved to be worthy adversaries for the bird-hunting government agents.

Feisty parakeet backers have submitted Freedom of Information requests demanding to know the whereabouts of their captured comrades and have delivered a petition to No. 10 Downing Street demanding a stop to the campaign.

Guerrilla bird lovers in southeast London, meanwhile, try to sabotage the government contractors who turn up to remove nests or capture birds.

"I just scream and shout and make a noise and [the birds] fly off," says Lorraine Cavanagh, a self-styled "parakeet protector" in a residential area south of London's Canary Wharf financial district. "My argument is, the sky doesn't belong to Defra."

Ms. Cavanagh has organized protests in her neighborhood park, mobilized her neighbors to confront bird catchers and pressed local government officials to intervene. Thanks in part to Ms. Cavanagh's lobbying, the local council won't allow Defra workers to shoot birds on council land, restricting them to nest removal or to traps that capture the birds alive.

Ms. Cavanagh says her chief nemesis is a man named Dave Parrott, a wildlife expert helping oversee the Defra program.

"As soon as Mr. Parrott comes around there are phone calls all around," Ms. Cavanagh says, pointing to the brick row houses of her allied neighbors. "They come out and heckle him."

Reached by phone, Mr. Parrott confirmed his name and job. "It's not a pseudonym," he said, but was reluctant to disclose much about his work.

"The majority of these birds have been taken into captivity and re-homed," he said. "I am not at liberty to give you any information on where they are." He added that Defra's current parakeet protocol is "nonlethal." Asked about Ms. Cavanagh and her campaign, he said, "Oh, yes, I know Lorraine." He said their relations are cordial.

In September, Mr. Parrott's men scored a coup when they slipped into the neighborhood and removed a large nest from a tree without attracting protesters. Two workers wearing face masks to protect against dust used an elevated ladder to reach the stick nest and knock it down, said Nicola Westcott, who witnessed the operation from her house across the street.

Dennis Hayes, 77, who lived next-door to the nest for years, said he has mixed emotions about the birds. On the one hand, they are colorful and exotic, he said. But "when they start screeching, it's bedlam."

Monk parakeets are indeed exotic by the standards of Britain's parakeet population. Their numbers are dwarfed by the much larger community of ring-necked parakeets that roost along the Thames in southwest London and number in the tens of thousands. Theories abound about how those birds, native to India, came to the U.K. Some think they escaped from the film set of the 1951 movie "The African Queen," while others speculate they took root in the 1960s after Jimi Hendrix allegedly released a pair over London's Carnaby Street.

U.K. law allows farmers and others to kill the ring-necked parakeets, which critics also consider pests, but they don't face the bigger government dragnet confronting monk parakeets.

Tropical parakeets have been spotted in other northern locales, from New York to Brussels. Roelant Jonker, a Dutch bird researcher who runs the website Cityparrots.org, says there are hundreds of "introduced parrot populations" in nonnative cities around the world, many of which he says are subject to "eco-xenophobia."

Few colonies have proved as contentious as London's monk parakeets. In Borehamwood, a leafy London suburb, two residents have spent years peppering the government with Freedom of Information requests, demanding to know the whereabouts of captured birds.

This past summer, one of the activists, Christine Brock, got a disturbing reply: of 10 birds captured over the past year, four died in captivity, the government said, adding that three were "humanely" dispatched while the fourth was "found dead from unknown causes."

Ms. Brock and her allies at the charitable group Animal Aid issued a blistering news release titled "Britain's Persecuted Parakeets" and accusing the state of "spending large sums of taxpayers' money killing birds who are doing no harm."

Often, the parakeets have proved deft at dodging the control measures. When Defra workers turned up to remove one nest recently, the birds flew off and built another one nearby, says Kate Fowler, an Animal Aid campaigner.

The bird catchers' strategic missteps haven't helped their campaign.

In Borehamwood, they set a trap in the backyard of one house near a large nest. But "no monk parakeets approached the trap, or indeed entered the garden," according to the Defra report. "This was probably due to a history of harassment toward parakeets by the homeowners and the presence of a resident cat."

On another occasion, Defra contractors were unable to maneuver their telescopic hand nets quickly enough to cover a nest entrance before the birds fled. "A total of 13 birds were observed escaping," Defra says.