I think that once upon a time I heard that cattle egrets were blown across the Atlantic Ocean in a storm. And that they were not known in the Americas before about 1950. Is this correct?
I’ve been thinking about this lately. We just got back from St Martin, where Irma hit 4 months ago. We’ve been going there a long time and had grown used to the birds we’d see. This year there were very few sugarbirds (bananaquits). They used to be everywhere, in large flocks. This year we only saw a few.
I’d never seen a bird of prey on the island. This year, osprey seemed to be everywhere.
Other years we would see an occasional iguana (not birds, but hey). This year iguanas were everywhere.
Here’s a New York Times article that gives a bit more positive outlook for birds in the upcoming climate apocalypse … “To Birds, Storm Survival Is Only Natural” – Nov. 12th, 2012
I live just outside Philadelphia, PA.
Last September, after Hurricane Harvey, I was stunned, if thrilled, to see a parakeet mingling with the drab sparrows and other local birds at my back yard feeders. FWIW, I was so discombobulated by this incongruity that I couldn’t “place” (identify) this distinctive turquoise critter at first-- I looked through my Pennsylvania bird handbooks, then suddenly realized “Idiot! That’s a parakeet, of course!”
I assumed it was a local escapee from a home or pet shop. But several days later, what turned out to be a monk parakeet, aka “Quaker parrot”, turned up. I’m sure both birds were “flung” here by the weather events down south.
So, if catastrophic climate change is about to kill off manunkind, I hope to experience the silver lining of beautiful tropical birds visiting my back yard before it all goes blooey.
As I understand it, some birds get caught in the eye of the hurricaine. The winds are fairly calm there, but rather strong immediately around the eye. So they just fly along with the hurricaine until it ends. That’s how tropical birds can end up in Philly or wherever.
I was in a hurricane back in the 80s. I remember that when the eye hit, there were a lot of monarch butterflies. If they can move along in the eye, I have no doubt birds can.
Budgerigars originate in Australia. That’s pretty far to be blown off course. It most likely was an escaped pet. As for the monk parakeet, are you sure he wasn’t just visiting from Brooklyn?
If I understand chaos theory correctly, it’s the butterflies that cause hurricanes. Probably they’d stop doing it if they didn’t have some way to survive them.
Cattle Egrets were first seen in the Americas in the Guianas as early as 1877. They first seem to have become established there permanently in the 1930s. They spread rapidly through the Americas and are now widespread in both North and South America.
It’s unlikely that they were carried to the Americas by a storm, since tropical storms originate in the Atlantic to the west of Africa, not over the continent itself. Rather, this was part of a global expansion of the species. In addition to the Americas, they colonized Australia in the 1940s and New Zealand in the 1960s. This is probably due to the spread and intensification of cattle farming throughout the world, providing suitable habitat.
Cattle Egrets appear to be quite capable of flying under their own power over very wide stretches of ocean. They have been recorded as vagrants on a number of remote islands. Here in Panama I have seen a small flock well out at sea flying steadily away from land to who knows where.
Monk Parakeets, originally from Argentina, are now well established in New York City and elsewhere in the US, including Chicago, Dallas, and Florida. There are a number of records from Philadelphia and neighboring areas. Your Monk Parakeet wasn’t “flung” from the south but more likely came from farther north (if not locally bred).
Budgerigars have established breeding populations in Florida but these recently seem to have declined. One in Philadelphia was almost certainly an escaped pet.
At present, there are seven species of feral parrot/parakeet with established breeding populations in the US. Many more occur as escaped pets in urban areas, especially in Florida and California.
There are flocks of feral monk parakeets in Pennsylvania along the New Jersey border. They are illegal to own as pets, though.
Colibri - can you give the list of established breeding populations? I know of two areas where parrots are resident in substantial numbers. I’d be curious to know if my observations match up. There is a mixed population near the LA Zoo in California. There are also the infamous parrots of telegraph hill. This group seems more homogeneous.
Thank you.
Do you mean Monk Parakeets? I don’t have a definitive list but the Cornell Lab of Ornithology lists at least San Diego, Phoenix, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, New Orleans, Chicago, New York, Providence, Miami, and St. Petersburg.