Attack of the feral parakeets in New York

“These guys are tenacious,” says John Stalzer, of PSEG Long Island, a utility company. No matter what his team does to stop them from building nests, the monk parakeets prevail. The birds will find the smallest gap, as teeny as a quarter of an inch (6mm), and insert a twig. “They will literally build off a twig and build their nests,” says Mr Stalzer, an environment specialist. “We should hire them as engineers.” The nests can be ten feet (three metres) in diameter , apartment buildings for the feathered set. When the birds expand their nests around electrical equipment, which keeps them warm, they can cause power cuts and sometimes fires. Since May 2021 they have knocked out power for 41,000 customers on Long Island.

Monk parakeets, also known as Quaker parakeets, come from Argentina, where they are pests to farmers. But they look cute and are sociable, so lots were exported. Birds now breed in more than 20 states, including cold spots like Chicago. Stephen Pruett-Jones, a professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, says most of the colonies in America are probably descendants of escaped or released pets (another theory, almost certainly not true, is that the wife of a pet-shop owner released all the pet parakeets after a bitter divorce).