Discover Edgewater > Monk Parakeets > History: 8/11/97

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The Record (Bergen County, NJ)

Monday, August 11, 1997
PARAKEET WARS; KEEPING AN EYE ON FEATHERED NEIGHBORS

EDGEWATER has been home to a lot of ruffled feathers of late, as residents rue the Great Parakeet Eviction of 1997.

While townspeople are perturbed that the state and a utility company gave the heave-ho to a seemingly felicitous flock of outlawed wild parakeets last month, they should consider the law of unintended consequences in general, and the European starling and the giant Canada goose in particular. The road to bird hell, it seems, is paved with good intentions (and the droppings that always seem to follow).

Fanciers of the gray-green parakeets have a point when they say that in the 20 years since the little chatterboxes arrived uninvited, they have shown scant indication of wreaking the havoc that gave their Argentinian kin a reputation for being a major agricultural pest. As one longtime resident told The Record's Jeff Pillets, "If you live in Edgewater, the parakeets are part of your life."

The town's monk parakeet population has remained stable at 80 to 90 in the past two decades, and the birds only crime has been the penchant for building nests under utility transformers. Last month, with permission from the state Division of Fish and Game, PSE&G destroyed a half-dozen nests, and one state Audubon Society official said the best answer was to "round them up and ship them back to Argentina." After residents protested the evictions, PSE&G and Fish & Game have backed off a bit. A PSE&G spokesman says the company is "bird friendly," and has no policy on monk parakeets, except to intervene when the 10-inch-high birds build nests under transformers, and create potential fire hazards. Fish & Game zoologist Paul Kalka says his agency will take no action against the wild parakeets but will keep a eye on them to make sure they don't damage property or drive out native birds.

Townspeople think this is all a bit silly, since the parakeets have been good neighbors, but Fish & Game is right to monitor these feathered invaders. There have been many species that were introduced into various regions of the United States and have caused headaches ever since.

The European starling, for example, was imported in the 1890s by a literature lover who wanted America to become home to all the birds mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare. Roughly 100 of the birds were released in Central Park, and for the first few years they never strayed outside Manhattan.

Since then, they have flourished to the point where the Northeast is home to millions of them. They devour fruit and potato crops, they drive out native species like bluebirds and woodpeckers, and they have been linked to several diseases.

The Canada goose, avian Public Enemy No. 1 in North Jersey, did not start living in the Northeast year-round until state and federal wildlife officials reportedly began importing Branta canadensis maxima, the biggest subspecies, into the region in the Thirties in an effort to increase the population for hunters. When migratory geese bred with them, or noticed that these fatter cousins weren't flying south, or realized that the increasingly suburbanized region was a great place to live, they gradually took up permanent residence as well.

Says Joan Walsh, a biologist with the New Jersey Audubon Society, "As a general rule, it's bad to let an introduced species persist because, as we've seen over and over, it can upset the natural balance.

... That said, it's hard for people to get rid of the species because they tend to like birds whether they're introduced or not."

Meantime, the wild parakeets of Edgewater live to chatter another day while the bird police keep a watchful eye. It seems like a good compromise, so far.