So today I woke up; while I was going through the motions of my breakfast, I stared bleakly out of the window at the small patio garden of the apartment building across the street,... to see a flock of green parrots. Eight of them, just chilling in the trees, as if it was the most normal thing.
Which probably is to them to some extent, but not to anyone else, since that's definitely not a native species of this country, and this place is in the middle of a heavily urbanized area, with green spaces entirely confined to parks and the occasional walled garden.
My first guess was: escapees from some aviary, or pets set free. But a flock of them in a tiny urban patio? How? Why?
Faced with the dilemma of what to do, of what I could do to help, and what I should not do. Who was I even supposed to call, who even deals with the rescue of birds? Not as obvious as it seems; there's no official dedicated animal control service, the closest thing to that is the State Forestry Corps, and they don't have much immediate coverage in the middle of a metropolis. Police, fire department? Could see them laughing and/or berating me for wasting their time.
I knew of some reputable NPOs and shelters, but their guidelines were just about any other kind of animal; there's even instructions about what to do to take temporary care of birds of prey, but nothing about exotic birds in an urban environment.
I was getting worried about the poor things even being able to survive in the open in this harsh winter.
What if time was of the essence and I had to act right in that window of time, before they flew away? What even is an efficient, humane and safe way to capture eight parrots? Where would have I kept them? What if I would have done more harm than good trying to help? What if they escaped from a quarantine facility and.. No, this was a job best left to professionals.
Before contacting anyone or trying anything, I would have been better off looking for informations, finding out the breed first, or at least narrowing it down to possible matches; even better, I could have found a sound sample matching their call, since pictures from that distance were useless. Whew, it was a quick search...
Turns out this is how I found out that my city, just as many others around the world, has a sizeable population of naturalized
rose-ringed parakeets, all descended from a bunch of pets that escaped/was released in the '70s; the Himalayan foothills are one of their natural habitats, and my place at its coldest is certainly no challenge to that. I had no idea how adaptive they were, or that there were even native populations of them around here. Local animal protection association confirmed.
TL;DR: Flock of feral parrots watching me.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14443855 times)