Community

They arrived in the Bronx several years ago from Argentina and have been noisy neighbors ever since, but Pelham Bay Park’s chattiest residents are welcome to stay as long as they like, park officials said.

As many as 50 exotic lime-green parrots nesting in a baseball field on the park’s southwestern edge pose no biological or infrastructural threat, park officials said.

Although authorities in other states have attempted to remove parrot nests because they are seen as a nuisance, the only thing the wild birds in the Bronx occasionally disrupt are the exercise workouts of fascinated parkgoers, who often stop and gaze up at the large, elaborate nests in the light posts, each holding as many as 15 birds.

“You hear their voices, and they’re unusual,” said Yvonne McDermott, an urban park ranger supervisor with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. McDermott said the birds are of the species Myiopsitta monachus and have been living happily in that spot for at least six years.

Bronx park rangers have no plans to remove the birds from their towering homes, giving birdwatchers an opportunity to admire a wild species originating from more than 5,000 miles away — just steps away from the No. 6 subway line.

Multiple flocks of wild parrots in Brooklyn have enjoyed a higher profile with city birdwatchers, but the lone Bronx flock has just recently become an attraction for some, including Brooklyn resident Steve Baldwin, the author of a blog and a self-published book about parrots in New York.

Baldwin has been trying to determine where they came from and said that explanations range from overturned pet freight trucks to an aviary roof that collapsed during a blizzard. But the most credible theory, the one supported by the Department of Parks, involves a grand escape from John F. Kennedy International Airport in 1968, when a crate cracked open and allowed the birds, intended for the pet industry, to join New York’s ecosystem.

The parrots, which eat seeds, plants and insects, are not a tropical species and can therefore survive the cold New York winters. “I’ve been out there when it’s been like five degrees and it’s blustery,” Baldwin said. “They look cold, but they’re not suffering.”

Patricia Diaz, a Bronx resident who owns two monk parrots and observes the wild flock regularly, said the parrots increased the number of their nests over time. Eleven of the 12 light posts that line the field now have nests, some of them more than 4 feet wide.

McDermott said that while she thinks Con Edison workers may have in the past given the bulging nests a “haircut,” the birds are not nearly the kind of infrastructural threat that some have made them out to be.

Last month, Connecticut’s United Illuminating Company faced off with animal rights activists over its campaign to eradicate monk parrots from utility poles because they could cause fires. Other states, too, have been less welcoming toward the species. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection lists the parrots as potentially dangerous to other species, and several states have banned the birds as pets for fear of their escape into the wild.

“They’re not a horrible species at all,” McDermott said. “They’re beautiful.”

pdf version