Wild Alexandrine parakeets can be seen in Asia in places such as India and
Thailand but also in a few places in Europe and North America. I went three
times last year in Belgium to see the small feral population living there.
Welcome to Discover PARROTS! My name is Florin and I invite you to subscribe to
my channel and click the bell notification button so you don't miss my
future videos. Now let's go and see those images. This was my first visit to the
site without binoculars without a proper camera just with my iPhone and of course
being autumn the trees were covered in leaves so I couldn't see very well the
parakeets let alone photograph or film them. However I followed the songs which
I hope you can hear and are very specific to the Alexandrine parakeet and I
found them in the tall trees by the water. They were just about there.
I couldn't see them then I could see them better from another angle which you can
see here but that was all that was all I could get. Next time in winter I guess I
think it was January I went with my camera with a good microphone and I
found them in a tree without leaves almost. They were sitting there a couple
first and then more. Here they are: Alexandrine parakeets, Psittacula eupatria
an introduced species to Belgium originally from Asia. A male on the right
and a male on the left. In the middle a female. I could count up to 14 birds in
that tree. It was Norway maple,
Acer platanoides which forms part of the diet in winter just as for the
Rose-ringed parakeets here in England as far as I could see. The Alexandrines are
nearly threatened in the wild. There are places in India or in Southeast Asia
where their numbers go down. However this is a feral population. It started 20
years ago in 1998. The following year they discovered six nests and they tried
the authorities they tried to capture the birds to eradicate this new invasive
species, but they couldn't so they gave up. In the following years there were 15
and 20 pairs and now who knows? I think they're over 100 pairs in the area and
they keep multiplying. Not as far as the Rose-ringed parakeets but still they are a
pretty good survival species in that climate. These parakeets stay in groups
but inside the group males and females stay together more often.
This is a couple the male on the left and the female on the right. Notice the
difference between female and male the male having this black and pink ring
around its neck but both sexes have these characteristic reddish-brown
patches on the shoulders. Those shoulder patches help distinguish them quickly
from the Rose-ringed parakeets which live in the same habitat as them. During this
footage I changed my position often so I can get the best angle and the best
light possible without obstructing branches so I could get these footage
but still it's not perfect. You see it's not easy to film these birds in the wild.
Notice how wild parrots move using their beak as the third leg. They are good
climbers. They like to climb and they actually have this need even in
captivity.
And this is where my visit ended. A bird of prey, a Common Buzzard appeared out of
nowhere and scared these parakeets which flew over my head into the forest.
So it was quiet and then they were all over flying and running away and this ended
my second visit to the Alexandrine parakeets. The third time I was in summer.
It was evening I could see two males we know pre-roosting ready to go back to
the roost site to sleep and there appeared a Rose-ringed parakeet. The cheeky little bird
which started to annoy this larger bird on the left you can see it jumps on the
branch under the Alexandrine parakeet and then tries to provoke him but of
course this large male chased away the smaller bird. And this was the last I've
seen of the Alexandrine parakeets in the wild. Thank you for watching and I
hope you liked these images of wild Alexandrine parakeets. I hope I
inspire you to go out and search wild parrots and parakeets and film them and
watch them and learn about them and I guess I'll see you all in my next video.
Don't forget to subscribe and hit that bell notification button so you don't
miss my future videos. Goodbye!