wild parrots of sunnyvale

[jenseits]

A video showing a wild flock of parrots in Sunnyvale, California.
YouTube - Wild parrots of Sunnyvale

Sunnyvale is a maybe an hour-ish south of San Francisco (i.e., where the famous wild flock of Telegraph Hill is located).

Could you imagine walking out of your house and seeing a bunch of conures chewing up the stucco? heh heh.

[expressmailtome]

I know that they do not belong here but they are beautiful! Thank you for sharing!

Matt

[LovelySydney]

cooool!! That wouldnt happen in my area.

[slic102]

No wild conures here, but we do have many flocks of quakers! I love seeing them in our feeders.

[tabooh]

That was just so amazing, love it to bits~ thank you

[tabooh]

I actually posted on my space . com your video, it is in the blog part. Just found it so nice had to share with other bird lovers to. thanks again

[jenniferag]

Wow.... how do they find food and not get eaten by prey birds?! Poor things... glad they're making it...

What kind are they? The one with the red spots on his head? A cherry or something?

Also is it just me or do some of them look like they have some beak problems?

Hopefully the city won't kill them... they are so aborable!

[jenseits]

It looks to be a mix of cherry headed and mitred conures. Maybe Monica will chime in... she's BB's expert on identifying species. Frankly, I can't tell cherry headeds apart from Mitreds, but she has one of each, I think.

I assume that they broke off from the flock in San Francisco and established their own colony in Sunnyvale. They probably forage for food like all the other birds, picking stuff out of trees and off the ground. But I believe these birds (like the ones in San Francisco) are prone to a particular neurological disease... and a few of them end up at the Mickaboo rescue out there.

[Monica]

LOL!

Appear to me to be a flock if mitreds!
The California Parrot Project
amazornia.us -- The Wild Parrots of Southern California
Wild Neighbors: In Search of the Wild Parrots of Berkeley. Category: Columns from The Berkeley Daily Planet - Thursday January 15, 2009
Cover Story | Sunnyvale Parrots
Flickr: larryhendler's stuff tagged with mitredconures

However, I do not know anything about the flock itself, but I will say that it seems to me as if some of the birds have a blue hue to the top of their heads - which could either mean they are hybrids, or they got into something blue? or perhaps just a trick of the light? Judging by the coloration's, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some white-eyed blood in there, since mitreds are supposedly born with some red on the forehead... although one article mentions a possibility that there's some cherry head (red mask) blood in there, too.


From the short amount of reading that I've done, these two flocks (Sunnyvale - and others below San Francisco - and the cherry heads/red masks *IN* San Francisco) are separate ones. Who knows if they've ever crossed paths before, it's not unlikely, especially with the flocks getting larger and having to roam further for food. A lot of plants we have in cities are foreign so the birds are able to find plenty of food via bird feeders as well as native and nonnative plants.

The "beak problem" is probably just "dirty birds" and nothing else. Then again, I can't say that for sure. This is my guess because the birds with dirty beaks also seem to have some dirty feathers as well.


The San Francisco flock is not suffering from a "neurological disease" but from parasites, or at least from what I had gathered. More can be found in the links below.
http://mickaboo.org/wildparrots.html
Mickaboo and the Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill



There's a flock of mitred conures on Maui, HI, which people had plans to "extinguish" (well, more like make them into captive birds - but not pets) since the flock is moving unnatural plants around the island, which takes over the native plants habitats.. and it's causing an issue. However, I don't think they were able to get the funding for it, and well it is rather difficult to catch wild birds!


As for mitred vs cherry head? Well, mitreds are larger, have less red, may be a darker green in color, has a patch of dark red right above the nares then lightens up to a brighter red. Depending on subspecies, may have red cheeks, or red "spots" dotted throughout the cheek area, however do not have any red that extends beyond the eyes on the top of the head. Cherry heads on the other hand usually tend to be smaller, brighter in coloration, born completely green, color up with red caps, and more red in the wing bend than mitreds.

Mitreds, red fronted aka waglers, and finsch's conures are often mistaken for cherry heads. The latter two species are often mistaken for mitreds, as well.

So on left we have Charlie, Mitred Conure. On right, we have Noel, cherry head conure.

[jenseits]

Originally Posted by Monica

The San Francisco flock is not suffering from a "neurological disease" but from parasites, or at least from what I had gathered.

Maybe it's not a "disase" (?) but it's definitely some sort of neurological issue... which is caused by parasites. The parasites get into the birds' brains and turn them to mush (not a technical definition)

Here's a video of one of birds at Mickaboo who has this neurological problem:
YouTube - Folsom eats

I've seen others that are equally heartbreaking. The birds run into things, fall off their perches, walk in circles. They basically can't survive in the wild anymore and that's when they end up at Mickaboo.

Not every wild conure in the Bay Area has this, but it seems to be a significant enough number. :( So sad.