Feral parakeets in Great Britain are wild-living, non-native parakeets that are an introduced species into Great Britain. The population mainly consists of ring-necked parakeets (Psittacula krameri), a non-migratory species of bird native to Africa and the Indian Subcontinent, with a few, small breeding populations of monk parakeets, and other occasional escaped cage birds. The origins of these birds are subject of speculation, but they are generally thought to have bred from birds that escaped from captivity or were released.
The British rose-ringed parakeet or ring-necked parakeet population is mostly concentrated in suburban areas of London and the Home Counties of South-East England, and for this reason the birds are sometimes known as "Kingston parakeets" or "Twickenham parakeets", after the London suburbs of Kingston upon Thames and Twickenham. The parakeets breed rapidly and have spread beyond these areas: Flocks have been sighted in other parts of Britain. Separate feral rose-ringed parakeet populations exist in and around other European cities.
Origin of the birds
How exactly the ring-necked parakeet population first came to exist and thrive in the wild in England is not known; however, theories abound, most centred around a pair or more of breeding parakeets that escaped or were released from captivity some time in the mid-1990s, consistent with the first widespread photographs of the birds.
More specific introduction theories explaining the origin of the birds have also been published:
Parakeets that escaped from the branch of Ealing Studios used for the filming of The African Queen (Isleworth Studios) in 1951
Parakeets that escaped from damaged aviaries during the Great Storm of 1987
A pair of parakeets released by Jimi Hendrix in Carnaby Street, London, in the 1960s
A number of parakeets reportedly escaped from a pet shop in Sunbury-on-Thames in 1970
Most ornithologists believe that the original birds likely escaped from aviaries before 1971. In terms of geographic origin, the British rose-ringed parakeets are thought to be a hybrid population of two Asian subspecies, P.k. borealis and P.k. manillensis.
Population in Britain
Despite the increase in notability and population size at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, escaped parakeets have been spotted in Britain since the 19th century. The earliest recorded sighting was in 1855 in Norfolk, and parakeets were also seen in Dulwich in 1893 and Brixton in 1894.
Throughout the decades since, parakeets continued to variously escape captivity; however, populations repeatedly died out until 1969, when the population of parakeets began to breed and sustain itself in London for the first time. Beginning in Croydon, the parakeets spread to Wraysbury, Bromley, and Esher.
The numbers remained very low, however, until the mid-1990s, when the population appeared to start increasing rapidly. The population was estimated at 500 birds in 1983, reached 1,500 by 1996, and 5,800 in the London area in 2002 (sheltering in up to 5 roosts). The last official roost count, in 2012, recorded 32,000 parakeets in London.
British ring-necked parakeets are most common in the south-east of England, including London suburbs, Surrey, Kent and Sussex. Parakeet populations have also been reported further north in Liverpool, Oxford, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Edinburgh, and Newcastle
Due to population growth and the relatively quick spread throughout Britain, estimates of parakeet numbers within the country vary. According to the London Natural History Society, in the early 2000s the largest population of rose-ringed parakeets was believed to exist in the South London suburbs, where the birds roosted principally in Esher Rugby Ground, Esher until 2007 (Esher Rugby Club named its women's team "The Parakeets" in a tribute to the birds). The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) estimates there to be around 8,600 breeding pairs in Britain. Other scientific counts conducted in 2012 placed the number at around 32,000 birds.