The Green Parrots of Uptown New Orleans Are Back!




Look who's back!

The green parrots of Uptown New Orleans (technically monk parakeets), after an absence of many years, graced our telephone wires with a visit this morning. Nine of them. Squawking and flying into the thick leaves of the Japanese magnolia where the sparrows and cardinals like to hang out.

I thought they used to hang out in the date palm trees on Jefferson Avenue, a block away. Some years back the city cut the palm trees down at the start of a five-year drainage project. Those palm trees were older than I am, older than any of the workers who cut them down. Nobody asked my permission to cut them down. Certainly they didn't ask the monk parakeets' permission. But there you go.

So I figured the parakeets had left the area. I've never seen one on the ground; they seem to like to stay up somewhere. And they like good things to eat. They used to feast on fermented Japanese plums in the tree in my front yard. Unfortunately, what Dan Gill called fire blight killed the tree some years ago. And the neighbor's Chinese tallow tree in the back, where they also liked to feast, is gone too (good riddance to that one; it's a nuisance tree). 

So maybe this morning they were just checking to see if there was anything good to eat in the yard. Or maybe they were doing the reunion tour, going from block to block to visit their old fans. 

Molly the cat is six years old now. I think this was her first monk parakeet sighting. She would definitely like to see more of them. For breakfast.

Here's a link to a historical note, from my journal The Daily Cattown News, December 2005. "B.K." is Before Katrina. "A.K.," well, you get it.

https://pastorkathy.blogspot.com/2005/12/green-parrots-of-uptown-new-orleans.html
 

Comments

  1. Photo GeorgeJuly 27, 2020 at 5:28 AM

    I remember well these squawking green wonders. Loving the high wires and leafed growth of palms and other trees. In New Orleans yearly sometime twice yearly after Katrina - 2007 to 2016 I ran into three populations of them.

    Jefferson Ave as is mentioned here.

    Just over the border into Jefferson Parish - along the Mississippi, high up amongst the high voltage towers and wires - nesting in vacated Osprey nests. Not far from the Mississippi River Batture there.

    Then amongst trees of the urbanized shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

    Thanks, Rev. Kathy for the good memories generated.

    ReplyDelete

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