Conservation FAQs

Many people have contacted our Ecology Office to enquire about large, bright green noisy birds they are seeing on a regular basis flying across the borough. They are Ring-necked (or Rose-cheeked) parakeets.

These colourful birds are either loved or hated as garden visitors, primarily due to their noisy demeanour. There are concerns of how they may affect our native wildlife, for example competing with woodpeckers for nest holes. They also have an impact on fruit-growers where they are fond of devouring the tasty buds, which we would perhaps rather they left to become fruits!

A lack of long-term research means it is hard to say the extent to which they are causing problems. We welcome records from our volunteers and from organisations like the RSPB, so we can monitor the impact of these birds in Wandsworth.

Background

The first documented breeding of Ring-necked Parakeets in Britain was in 1855 in Norfolk. Small populations were intermittently present in the Greater London area for the next century and the first documented breeding of the twentieth century occurred in Gravesend, Kent in 1969.

They appeared more widely in the 1970s but their origins are the subject of a number of urban myths: some say they escaped from a quarantine holding at Heathrow; some say they escaped from an exotic film set in the Shepperton Studios.

In their native Asia they eat wide variety of fruit, berries, nuts, seeds, grain, but in Britain they are omnivorous, taking any kind of scraps available. Ring-necked parakeets are hole-nesters, often taking over an old woodpecker nest hole, or a larger sized nestbox.