Monk Parakeets
Noisy, bright, squawking and quarrelsome, it’s me again. No, it’s the Monk Parakeets of Rome:
Aren’t they handsome?
I wonder what their natural predators are, because there seem to be precious few of them in Rome. I check and it appears that raptors, snakes, and white-eared opossum are their major predators in South America. The explosion of their population here is partly due to a local lack of white-eared opossum, then.
They are perfectly adapted to eating acorns. It’s slightly freakish to watch a bird with such agile feet. They’re more like hands. A white-eared opossum would be glad to have feet like this:
This shot is just begging for a caption:
Here are my previous adventures with them:
And finally, don’t they look beautiful?
