EvC Forum: How do parakeets survive the midwest winter?

We are told that these critters are from the amazon forest and that they can't survive the harsh winter here. And yet, if you ask anyone who works in construction, he'll tell you all about entire parakeet villages under bridges, on top of cell phone towers, etc.

I'm an engineer. We've been preparing for a major project in the Midwest. You know what us engineers do while we have nothing to do? We stand around and stare at the parakeet villages (nests) and wonder how the hell they survive the winter here. We know they don't migrate south. What the hell do they eat in December, January, and February?

What's more, I've been observing over the years that every year there are more and more of them. They don't bother anyone, so most people don't even notice. But they are everywhere.

A couple years ago, I was working on a bridge in Chicago. And there they were under the bridge. Whole village of them. There must have been hundreds or even thousands. We tried to leave them alone. None of us wanted to bother them. And all that time we were working on it, we kept wondering how the hell they survive the harsh winter here.

If you do a search on the internet, you're not going to find anything. Shouldn't this be on the discovery channel or something?

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Message 2 of 13 (708587)
10-11-2013 9:14 AM

Thread Copied from Proposed New Topics Forum

Thread copied here from the How do parakeets survive the midwest winter? thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

jar

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Message 3 of 13 (708590)
10-11-2013 9:21 AM

Reply to: Message 1 by yenmor
10-10-2013 12:42 PM

Carolina Parakeet

The Carolina Parakeet was resident as far north as Ottawa, Canada so I am not surprised at all that feral Parakeets do well in the US today.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

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yenmor

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Message 4 of 13 (708593)
10-11-2013 9:25 AM

Reply to: Message 3 by jar
10-11-2013 9:21 AM

Re: Carolina Parakeet

Yeah, but what do they eat in the winter months when everything is frozen for months?

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jar

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Message 5 of 13 (708594)
10-11-2013 9:27 AM

Reply to: Message 4 by yenmor
10-11-2013 9:25 AM

Re: Carolina Parakeet

The same things the Carolina parakeets ate.

Lots of animals and birds survive winters jess fine.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

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Tangle

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Message 6 of 13 (708597)
10-11-2013 10:11 AM

We've got them too:

The Kingston Parakeets, also known as the Twickenham Parakeets, are feral Rose-ringed Parakeets (Psittacula krameri) that live in the suburbs around Kingston and Twickenham, South London, England, numbering at least 6,000, with some estimates as high as 50,000 individuals[citation needed]. The origins of the flocks are subject to speculation.

No-one seems to know where they came from:

The specific origin of the birds is not known, but they most likely came from a single pair of breeding parakeets which escaped or were released in the mid-1990s. Other origins have been attributed to them: the most popular idea being that they escaped from Ealing Studios, West London, during the filming of The African Queen (which was actually made in the Isleworth Studios) in 1951. Other theories are that they escaped from an aviary during a 1987 hurricane;

...but I like this one best:

or that a pair released by Jimi Hendrix in Carnaby Street, London, in the 1960s, are to blame.

Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android

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Message 7 of 13 (708598)
10-11-2013 10:11 AM

Reply to: Message 1 by yenmor
10-10-2013 12:42 PM

If you do a search on the internet, you're not going to find anything.

Really? Are your search capabilities that bad?

I found this in less than 30 secs.
http://www.northjersey.com/...BR__views__ideal_for_kids.html
http://meadowblog.net/2013/03/monk-parakeets-doing-well/
http://chicagoist.com/...nk_parrots_thriving_for.php#photo-1

From Wiki

quote:
Considerable numbers of Monk Parakeet were imported to the United States in the late 1960s as pets. Many escaped or were intentionally released, and populations were allowed to proliferate. By the early 1970s, M. monachus was established in seven states, and by 1995 it had spread to eight more. There are now thought to be approximately 100,000 in Florida alone.
As one of the few temperate-zone parrots, the Monk Parakeet is more able than most to survive cold climates, and colonies exist as far north as New York City, Chicago, Wisconsin, Cincinnati, Louisville, northern New Jersey, coastal Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut, and southwestern Washington. This hardiness makes this species second only to the Rose-ringed Parakeet amongst parrots as a successful introduced species.
In addition, they have also found a home in Brooklyn, New York, after an accidental release decades ago of what appears to have been black-market birds[14] within Green-Wood Cemetery. The grounds crew initially tried to destroy the unsightly nests at the entrance gate, but no longer do so because the presence of the parrots has reduced the number of pigeons nesting within it. The management's decision was based on a comparative chemical analysis of pigeon feces (which destroy brownstone structures) and Monk Parakeet feces (which have no ill effect). Oddly then, the Monk Parakeets are in effect preserving this historic structure. Brooklyn College has a Monk Parakeet as an "unofficial" mascot in reference to the colony of the species that lives in its campus grounds. It is featured on the masthead of the student magazine. They have also made their homes in the lamp posts in Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. Most of these Quaker populations can be traced to shipments of captured Quakers from Argentina.[15]

Nothing to see here folks. Move along.

Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

"God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.

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ringo

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Message 8 of 13 (708611)
10-11-2013 12:12 PM

Reply to: Message 4 by yenmor
10-11-2013 9:25 AM

Re: Carolina Parakeet

yenmor writes:

Yeah, but what do they eat in the winter months when everything is frozen for months?

We have a lot of sparrows around here in winter - considerably farther north than you. They eat seeds. Feathers are well-suited to cold weather, airtight on the outside and down-filled on the inside.

We have nuthatches in winter too. When they fly south, they come here.

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PaulK

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Message 9 of 13 (708612)
10-11-2013 12:19 PM

Reply to: Message 7 by Theodoric
10-11-2013 10:11 AM

There are feral parakeets in Europe, too. London famously has a colony. And I saw some in Bonn when I was there a few years back (it was December, so the German winter doesn't scare them).

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AZPaul3

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Message 10 of 13 (708659)
10-11-2013 6:48 PM

Reply to: Message 1 by yenmor
10-10-2013 12:42 PM

Stay Warm

As a parakeets, or even as a whole flock of keets, you can survive the mid-west winters quite well if you find a nice warm place to live

and wear your winter clothes.

If not then you will end up frozen

with a stick up your ass. A Popcikeet.

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herebedragons

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Message 11 of 13 (708660)
10-11-2013 7:27 PM

Reply to: Message 7 by Theodoric
10-11-2013 10:11 AM

Really? Are your search capabilities that bad?

Have you seen Let me Google that for You before? It makes me laugh. I have wanted an an opportunity to use it, and this would have been a good one.

HBD

Whoever calls me ignorant shares my own opinion. Sorrowfully and tacitly I recognize my ignorance, when I consider how much I lack of what my mind in its craving for knowledge is sighing for. But until the end of the present exile has come and terminated this our imperfection by which "we know in part," I console myself with the consideration that this belongs to our common nature. - Francesco Petrarca

"Nothing is easier than to persuade people who want to be persuaded and already believe." - another Petrarca gem.