Playful Parakeets: Green Chilli-shaped Missiles of Entertainment

Ever exuberant, raucously loud, canny, and shrewd, the members of this family of birds are as popular as they are notorious. But first, a clarification. Worldwide, there are 315 species of parrots and 115 species of parakeets; in Australia you also have the budgerigar (Melopsittacus undulatus), which is essentially a parakeet. In India, we have 15 species of parakeets and a solo parrot, the vernal hanging parrot (aka lorikeet or Loriculus vernalis). It hangs out — often upside down — in the Northeast and Western Ghats, looking like an animated green banana. Parakeets are also to be had in Africa. While parrots are usually somewhat chunky large birds with rounded tails, dressed in various colours, our parakeets are smaller (around 42 cm), slim and missile-shaped and come in a million tints of emerald.

Worldwide, parrots and parakeets gained popularity because of their ability to mimic us or to “talk” to us and have been kept as cage birds for millennia. They are amongst the most intelligent birds in the world. Our rose-ringed parakeet (Psittacula krameri) so impressed the ancient Romans that they ate the birds’ heads at banquets hoping to imbibe some of the intelligence from their brains. Parakeets have opposing-facing (two facing forward and two backward) claws and will climb up their cage bars, hand-over-hand, perhaps like humans do. They will eat a piece of papaya like us, holding it up to their mouths with a claw. Again, like us, they are hugely wasteful eaters spilling far more than they consume.

Watching parakeets is never boring. Look at them streak across the skies in flocks, screaming as they swerve and bank, showing off myriad shades of green in their wings and tails. Spot them clown on telephone and cable wires, hanging topsy-turvy, unbalanced by their huge, rounded heads. But they’re at their most endearing while romancing, which may start around October with resulting consequences (bringing up the family!) lasting through April. The smitten Romeo will land on his perch a little distance away from his lady-love and eye her diffidently side-on. Then he’ll begin to sidle towards her, step by step, holding up an empty claw as if offering her a bouquet of flowers which he forgot to bring (or ate). Reaching next to her, he’ll quickly switch over to her other side and repeat the whole manoeuvre from there. And then he will nuzzle her and lovingly feed her the mashed fruit (pap) he has brought; beak to beak this is a passionate French kiss if ever there was one. On one occasion, I watched a romancing pair whose canoodling was being carefully overseen by another: their coach perhaps?

The handsome rose-ringed parakeet (around 42 cm) also called the Indian ring-necked parakeet is probably the most well-known parakeet in India. The gentleman, clad in bright-green wears a dark rose coloured collar, his wife does not. His deeply hooked bill which is like a nutcracker, is bright red. These birds are found virtually everywhere: in gardens, parks, woodlands, in the plains and hills, and if fed regularly will turn up in huge flocks every day right on time. Their smaller (36 cm) cousin the plum-headed parakeet (Psittacula cyanocephala), endemic to India, has a head the colour of a ripe plum and a flash of maroon on the wing. The lady has a grey head, and both have papaya orange bills. The slaty-headed parakeet (Psittcula himalayana; 46 cm), is an altitudinal migrant that lives in the Himalayas in summer descending to the plains in winter. The largest of the better-known parakeets is the Alexandrine, a tall (56-62 cm) statuesque fellow, that wears maroon epaulettes on green wings, a black half ring around his lower neck and a rose-coloured hind-scarf. It has a hoarse squawk and was the first parakeet that went west — taken to Greece by Alexander the Great, no less.

Since then, the rose-ringed parakeet has also travelled to the UK and now (to the horror of local ornithologists there) has begun to colonize English gardens, bullying the locals. Escaped birds are now colonising Europe too, acclimatising to the harsh weather.

Parakeets nest in holes — in the boles (trunks) of trees, in holes or cavities in walls, on rampart ruins. Walk along the ramparts of any ancient monument in India and you are sure to come across a parakeet’s apartment with its residents at the door watching you curiously. The tall trunks of palm trees are another favourite site and small colonies may be established in such groves. Females lay three or four round white eggs and the parents care for the babies, feeding them regurgitated pap and guarding them like Rottweilers.

While entertaining us, parakeets can be ruinous to orchard owners and farmers. Indeed, Salim Ali mentions that rabbles of parakeets hang out in railway yards awaiting wagons laden with sacks of grain to be unloaded, upon which they descend gleefully, ripping the fabric of the sacks and indulging in the golden waterfall of spilling grain. Similarly, they will descend on fields of ripening grain in huge squadrons and mercilessly lay them to waste, moving from one section of the field to another when driven away. Ripening fruit in orchards, like mangos and guavas, are bitten into once before the bird decides that the next one might be sweeter. Raids are carried out in pin-drop silence and the birds vanish uncannily into the thick foliage. When flushed they fly swift as missiles dodging and banking, squawking raucously.

Parakeets are amongst the most trafficked birds in the world. Though it is illegal to keep a parakeet as a pet in India, the rule is ignored wholesale. Admittedly, they make endearing pets — they can be affectionate, blasphemous, clownish, interesting, love chillies, are long-lived, and can be taught to do party tricks! In the hands of unscrupulous conmen, they are used to predict your future by picking a card. In reality, these extroverts of the skies are best appreciated for their sheer joie de vivre as they streak across the heavens, screaming blue-murder.

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