Ah, fall -- the season when the parrots of Temple City and Arcadia take a little vacation in Pomona. A pretty large flock just flew overhead a few minutes ago, sounding like a swarm of demons, and I've seen them a few other times this year. I wonder why Pomona and why late fall every year? I've read what I could on the subject of the local pandemonium of parrots, but the question goes unanswered. For those of you not up on your local parrotry, this particular flock dates back to well before the 1920s, and it's made up of at least six species -- one of them not even a parrot at all, but a parakeet. Their base of operations has been the current LA County Arboretum since back when it was Lucky Baldwin's giant estate. Apparently our tendency to plant very tall trees and exotic non-native plants is particularly conducive to urban parrots.
The important thing to know is that San Francisco and Brooklyn got nothin' on us. (Okay, maybe they have a few things on us, but nothing psittaform.)
10 comments:
Report your sightings! There's a great group that tracks the parrots and you can help their research - http://californiaparrotproject.org/
Gaaaahhh... just saw you linked them in your post! Oh well - more publicity is great.
I heard them this morning, but couldn't drag myself out of bed to go see them. They seem to like the persimmon tree -- lots of yummy mush to consume.
I think they are cool but then again they are not landing in my yard.
I was so surprised at how you could see their colors from the ground as they were really high up.
My dog Liza does a new parrot dance in the yard when they fly through.
Mark
I've been quite excited the past couple weeks since they were roosting around here. Now I hear they are cruising up and down Garey.
A friend of mine describes the sound they make as a hundred rusty tricycles pedaling furiously in a parade.
I've often wondered what food the parrots seek. They don't seem interested in my walnuts, though the crows, squirrels, and raccoons all take a share. There are small sweet dates on a blue palm down the street, but I have not seen the parrots there.
Three years ago they stopped to eat on my huge pecan tree,there were literally hundreds of Parrots! I've gotta say it was kinda scary at first cause I wasn't expecting it and it took me a few minutes to fugure out what kind of birds they were. I've always wondered where they came from and I had heard them the last few days but ut wasn't until today that they came back to my tree! I was so excited and i even took video of them, I was able to zoom in on a few of the parrots eating pecans, 15 minutes later they all flew away in formation, coolest thing ive seen, in my back yard that is...
man, are they annoying... seen them alot on west mission and south garey.
i much prefer the local humming birds that seem to love our back yard
When I was a paperboy for the "Prog" in the 70's, my route was around Roosevelt, McKinley, and Buchanan. At about 6:30 one Saturday morning while on McKinley, I could hear about 50 children screaming and laughing and carrying-on up on the 300 block of Roosevelt. When I got there I saw no kids, but two dozen of these guys way up in a tree squawking their lungs out. Many years later I learned about the flock from S.F. and thought this might be them. Thanks for the mini-history lesson. I miss old Pomona.
Just saw 100s of them this morning and afternoon. The noises they make sound unlike we normally hear in SoCal. We looked up, and couldn't believe how many green birds there were!
I saw them late yesterday afternoon, too! Welcome back ;)
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