Prometheus 6

On a recent Saturday, 20 or 30 of the resident parrots swooped down and, amid much screeching, alighted on the branches of an oak tree beside a pre-World War II apartment building. Children inside the apartments gestured and called at the birds; sometimes the parrots talk back. (In captivity, monk parakeets can develop a vocabulary of about 200 words.)

Parrots Have Colonized the Wilds of Brooklyn
By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 28, 2006; A02

NEW YORK -- Alex Joseph, a West Indian-born parks worker, rakes the lawn at the grandly gothic Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn when he and his fellow laborers hear what sounds like a flock of sea gulls dive-bombing at their heads. The workers instinctively duck and whip round and look up and see -- those crazy green parrots, expertly mimicking the sea gull's caw.

"Man, they do that a couple times a week just to play with our minds," Joseph said, grinning wide and shaking his head. "They are a crazy bunch of immigrants, those birds."

They are the wild parrots of Brooklyn, these emerald-feathered yakkers with the wisenheimer sense of humor. Thought to be long-ago escapees from a container at John F. Kennedy International Airport, their ranks replenished by unauthorized releases from pet shops, the parakeets -- originally from Argentina -- have become accomplished city dwellers. There is a parrot colony along the Hudson River cliffs in New Jersey and another bunch that prefers Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. Of late, two arrivistes have taken up residency on an apartment ledge on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

But mostly these are Brooklyn parrots, content in their adopted borough of 2.5 million people.

The research paper, published in the journal Current Biology, said: "Our data show that the adjustment of individual great tits to local noise conditions is not a local phenomenon but occurs throughout Europe and probably in all noisy urban areas....Urban birds often experience very noisy conditions while singing, which may influence the efficacy of their acoustic signals.

Urban-based birds 'learn to rap'

Birds living in cities are performing a type of "avian rap" while their rural counterparts are sticking to more traditional sounds, a study shows.

Dutch researchers found that urban species of birds sing short, fast songs rather than the slower melodies of countryside birds.

City birds also sing at a higher pitch and will try out different song types.

Experts said city birds have adapted to counter background noise and increase their chances of finding a mate.

Varied songs

The research focused on great tits in ten major European cities, including London, Paris, Amsterdam and Prague, and compared them to forest-dwellers.

In every comparison city birds sang a more varied array of songs, which were short and had higher minimum frequencies.

Urban tits consistently experimented with between one and five note calls, while those in forests close to the cities stuck to more normal combinations of two, three and four note tunes, the research found.

The study even gives the example of one Rotterdam great tit attempting a 16-note song, possibly copied from a blue tit.