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Category: Nature conservation
Posted on: September 3, 2010 6:45 PM, by Greg Laden
Ferrel monk parakeets in Brooklyn (They've been living there long enough to get into some bird identification guides) are being poached by .... parakeet poachers! Here is the story.
Check this out:
Exelon, a nuclear giant that recently backed away from building new nuclear plants, is moving into wind.
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Comments
'ferrel', huh?
A buncha damned furriners, anyway.
Posted by: gruebait | September 3, 2010 7:23 PM
Do you mean "feral"? I can imagine Will Ferrel in a chicken costume...
I always laugh at claims of "furrin' species" and tell folks "honey, dey's natives now". Humans broke down the barriers to their movement and they did what they've always done in nature - move around in favorable conditions. After all, we know that historically their ancestors moved, were isolated, differentiated, and for the most part remained isolated from their common ancestor. Some creatures (like the damned boll weevil) can be horribly destructive when they find themselves in an area with more resources, less competition, or more favorable climatic conditions, but it's silly to insist that they're a "foreign" or even "invasive" species many decades after they were first introduced. I'll stick to "pest" and "weed".
Posted by: MadScientist | September 3, 2010 7:56 PM
We have had a large colony in Austin for decades. There's also a colony in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The locals will tell visitors that it's the Puerto Rican parrot. But it's really a colony of monk parakeets.
It's interesting that they will form successful, long-term colonies, but not spread out from those colonies. They need the field with tall posts nearby. Given that place to build their group nests, they will compete well with grackles. But won't stray far from that place.
Posted by: Russell | September 4, 2010 8:29 AM
It's actually old news Greg. First heard of the feral parrots in one of the local Brooklyn newspapers a couple of years ago. Haven't seen any myself, though I know where they are (I just don't head out to that part of Brooklyn much.).
Posted by: John Kwok | September 4, 2010 11:38 AM
I gather there may be some in the UK now as well, although the 'standard' feral parrot in London is the Rose-Ringed, with a population in the London area of 10,000 and rising - some people are starting to get a bit worried...
Posted by: alan | September 4, 2010 12:12 PM
Is it surprising news that an energy-infrastructure company expands the number of types of energy-infrastructure it is capable of constructing? If a company that made many coal-fired power plants bought a subsidiary branch that gave it the ability and expertise to build oil-fired plants, would that be as newsworthy?
And how is wind power any more or less "natural" than nuclear? Uranium exists, as do gradients of air pressure on the Earth's surface.
Posted by: TheBrummell | September 8, 2010 7:00 PM