More than once I have been asked quite
aggressively: “What are you going to do about
the parakeets?” One lady was particularly
adamant: “You must get rid of them!” I told
her that there was nothing that I could do, and
that in any case I thought they were rather
splendid. I asked her why she objected to them
so vehemently. “Because they are not British.
They shouldn’t be here,” she snapped, in a
tone Margaret Thatcher would have been
proud of. I muttered that was tantamount to
racism and left her clapping her hands and
yelling “shoo!” at a parakeet that had popped
its head out of a nearby nest hole. It responded
with a defi ant squawk.
It is the sound of parakeets that o ends the
ears of another of my neighbours. “Bill, it’s an
appalling noise. Surely you don’t like it?” “Well,
I wouldn’t call it mellifl uous, but surely it’s no
worse than our local soundscape? Non-stop
ambulance sirens, trains, the constant clanging
of workmen putting up sca olding, and hedge
trimmers and leaf blowers. You can barely hear
the parakeets.” At which point, his wife joined
in. “They cut through everything! They are
worse than... ” For a moment she fi shed for an
appropriate simile. “They sound like a dentist’s
drill!” I wasn’t going to let that one go. I was
incensed. “Parakeets may be a bit squawky, but
they do not sound like dentist’s drills!”
The couple next door decided to take the
issue into their own hands by dangling a
large paper kite from what resembled a giant
fi shing rod. Naturally, whenever the wind blew
it towards my fence, I objected that it was
invading my air space. I also explained that even
real live kites don’t panic parakeets, especially if- like this one – they are hanging upside down.
I feel almost obliged to comment on the
possibility of a cull of parakeets. My initial
reaction is: it’s a bit late now! Added to which,
their favoured habitat is gardens, parkland
and other recreational spaces, where guns and
bloodshed are generally discouraged.
I notice that I am already out of space, long
before I have exhausted my topic. I haven’t
dealt with Herring Gulls and other belligerent
seabirds from terns to fulmars. And, of course,
that elegant and serene yet utterly duplicitous
scourge of the park pond, the Mute Swan.
They may well belong to the Queen, but did
you know they can break a man’s arm? I may
well be returning to this subject. ■
BILL ODDIE
Least wanted
78 Birdwatch•October 2017 http://www.birdguides.com/birdwatch
COMMENT NEWS OF THE WILD
❝
Many of my
neighbours seem
to subscribe
to a worryingly
widespread
belief that I am
responsible
for all avian
misdemeanours
❞
Is Ring-necked Parakeet Britain’s
most hated bird species? It
certainly seems to be in Bill
Oddie’s neighbourhood.Every birder has surely been asked about their favourite bird, but what about those
unloved species? Here’s a list to be going on with...HARVEY VAN DIEK (WWW.AGAMI.NL)T
he question I am most frequently
asked is: what’s your favourite
bird? It’s Barn Swallow. What’s
not to like? Then again, aren’t
all birds beautiful in their own
way? Apparently not. I have been
compiling a list of least-loved British species,
including some non-native immigrants.
Surely we all love House Martins and feel
blessed if they build their little mud igloos
under our guttering? However, if they choose
a site above the front door, so that their profuse
pooing spatters the normally pristine porch –
and dries almost instantly as hard as concrete- they are not so welcome.
At a time when the BTO has quite rightly
elevated House Martins to stardom, it is hard
to believe that there are people who hate them
so much that they instruct the builder to swat
down the nests with a sca olding pole. You’ll
miss them when they’re gone.
In India, there is a bird that is colloquially
known as the Brainfever Bird because its
monotonous three-note song is so relentless it
drives people crazy. We don’t have Brainfever
Birds (or Common Hawk Cuckoo), but we
do have Collared Doves. This spring I was
sipping a glass of wine in Languedoc in the
south of France. A delightful setting, but with
a delirious soundtrack: the relentless, tuneless,
never-varying and never-ending whingeing
of Collared Dove. Arguably more likely to
induce worse brain fever than Common Hawk
Cuckoo. Especially since they sing in choirs,
and are capable of drowning conversation and
the songs of other birds. Collared Doves are an
invasive species if ever there was one. And to
think how thrilled I was to twitch the fi rst British
pair in north Norfolk in the mid-1950s.
Unpopular parakeets
A species that one might call the present-day
equivalent of Collared Dove, in that in the
space of a few years it has gone from a novelty
to an epidemic, is Ring-necked Parakeet.
Whether they escaped from a fi lm studio or
were released by Jimi Hendrix’s girlfriend, they
took a while to spread, but now they are almost
everywhere, and boy do some people hate them,
including many of my neighbours, who seem
to subscribe to a worryingly widespread belief
that I am personally responsible for all avian
misdemeanours.1710 p78 Bill Oddie v2.indd 78 18/09/2017 11:17:42