Maple Leaf’s own feral flock of Scarlet-fronted Parakeets have returned.
At least a half-dozen of them were spotted (and heard!) at noon today near Northeast 88th Street and 12th Avenue Northeast.
They flew off to the northeast. (Minutes later, an American Crow chased a Merlin off a conifer near 15th Avenue Northeast. It flew off southeast.)
We last posted about the feral flock in 2011. Then, and more recently, only a few birds were seen.
We first wrote about them in 2010:
The flock has been around for decades, at least since the early 1990s, and possibly got started when bird-lovers discovered their pet parakeets were too loud to keep in the house. Local lore has it that the birds winter in Maple Leaf and spend summer vacations at Seward Park.
The size of the flock varies, but there don’t seem to be as many now as eight or 10 years ago, when a dozen or more parakeets would descend on the neighborhood. Over time they have been called parrots, Crimson-fronted parakeets, Red-fronted Conures and Mitred conures.
(Aratinga wagleri photo courtesy Dennis Paulson.)
