Parrots' nests cleared from power sources
LEONIA — It was hard to miss the tangled mass of twigs engulfing a transformer high atop a utility pole in Overpeck County Park on Fort Lee Road.
LEONIA — It was hard to miss the tangled mass of twigs engulfing a transformer high atop a utility pole in Overpeck County Park on Fort Lee Road.
At 5:15 Thursday afternoon a week ago, I was peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink and occasionally looking out at the backyard feeders. I've made a lot of planting mistakes through the years but I was much better at putting my bird feeders in the right places.
I knew that if I was going to maintain them properly and spend money for seeds, I certainly wanted to be able to easily see what was going on at them from the spots in the house I most frequent. And those spots are the area around the kitchen sink, the kitchen door window and in the living room recliner with a picture window view of the front yard.
When I was done peeling all the potatoes I scooped up the peels with my hand and nonchalantly looked out the window. But I immediately dropped the peels back into the sink and for a second thought I was hallucinating. There in an open hanging black oil sunflower feeder was a big light green bird with dark blue on its wings.
BATTLE GROUND “I’m a bad bird! I’m a bad bird! I’m a bad bird!”
Doc the parrot’s deep-voiced self-assessment bounced off the walls of Brenda Wilson’s home seconds after he bit his new owner on the finger. She had unknowingly committed the cardinal sin in his world. She had threatened his “baby bell.”
It’s been more than 40 years since the first monk parakeet, a chatty, bright green South American parrot popular with pet owners, was first spotted flitting through Chicago’s Hyde Park. Even in 1968, it was a bit of an oddity. Since then, however, the introduced species has become a popular fixture in the Chicago area, attracting plenty of media attention. Now, a new survey takes a look at just how these urban parakeets are adapting city life.