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Rose-ringed Parakeet | Psittacula krameri
Halsbandparkiet | Cotorra de kramer
The Rose-ringed Parakeet is the one parrot in this region that does not belong here: a slim, grass-green parakeet with a bright red bill and a very long, tapering blue-green tail, native to Africa and southern Asia. In Australia and New Zealand the birds are escaped and released cage stock — the 'Indian ringneck' is one of the most widely kept cage parrots in the world. Both countries treat it as an unwanted species and remove it as soon as it turns up in the field.
Voice
It is loud and unmistakable: a sharp, screeching kee-ak ... kee-ak, repeated two or three times, usually in flight and usually the first sign of it. Disturbed birds add a rapid shrill ak-ak-ak. Perched in a tree it talks more quietly, with grating and chattering notes. The call carries far over roofs and gardens and is higher and harder than that of any native parrot of this region.
No freely licensed recording has been found for this species yet; what to listen for is described below.
Identification
About forty centimetres, but more than half of that is tail: two greatly elongated central tail feathers, blue-green with a yellow tip, give the bird an arrow-shaped silhouette in flight behind short pointed wings. The plumage is almost wholly grass-green, a little yellower below, with a bright red upper mandible. The adult male has a black chin and cheek stripe running into a narrow black collar, above it a rose-pink nape band and a bluish wash on the hindcrown. Females and young birds lack all of that and are plain green, at most with a faint shadow ring. Flight is fast, straight and purposeful, on quick shallow beats.
Confusion species
In Australia the main risk is Australian Ringneck (Barnardius zonarius), which also wears a collar — but yellow rather than rose-pink, with a dark head, and the bird is stockier and shorter-tailed. The two long, slender Polytelis parrots come closer in silhouette: Superb Parrot (Polytelis swainsonii) has a yellow face with a red throat band, Regent Parrot (Polytelis anthopeplus) is olive-yellow with a black wing, and neither has the red bill. Australian King Parrot (Alisterus scapularis) is bulkier, the male deep scarlet on head and underparts. In New Zealand only Red-crowned Parakeet (Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae) invites confusion, and it is far smaller, red-fronted and grey-billed.
Habitat
Where it shows up here it stays with people: gardens and town parks with old trees, street plantings, orchards and crop margins, and fruit and nut plantations. It roosts communally in tall trees and feeds on fruit, seed, flower buds and grain. It nests in tree hollows, including old woodpecker holes abroad and holes in buildings here — exactly the sort of cavity native parrots and cockatoos compete for.
Where the bird is most often found, arranged by main group and formation.
Range and movements
There is no established wild population within this map window. In Australia more than eight hundred cases of escaped or released birds were logged between 1999 and 2013, strongly concentrated in and around the large cities; small groups sometimes persist for a few years and are then removed. In Western Australia the species is a C1 declared pest for the whole state, where landholders are obliged to remove it. In New Zealand birds have been reported from North Auckland to Canterbury, with a colony at Beachlands eradicated in 2005–06, an attempt at Havelock North in 2016, and about thirty birds that escaped during a fire at Christchurch's zoo in 2016 and were largely recaptured.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
Where and when to look
Listen in the suburbs: that sharp screeching kee-ak belongs in no Australian or New Zealand garden and is nearly always this bird. Then check the silhouette in flight — extremely long narrow tail, short pointed wings, a fast straight line above the roofs. Always report a sighting: in both countries such reports are acted on, and an early one is the difference between a group removed and a population established.
Conservation
Least Concern (LC) globally — on the contrary, it is one of the most successful birds in the world, with established populations in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Japan. Within this region the question is therefore not how to conserve it but how to keep it out. Australia rates it in its highest category of bird risk: it eats grain and fruit, can do real damage in horticulture, and competes with native hollow-nesters for nest cavities, a scarce commodity in Australian forests. New Zealand has declared it an Unwanted Organism under the Biosecurity Act. Policy in both countries is early detection and immediate removal, because experience elsewhere shows that eradication after establishment is next to impossible.
Scientific name
Psittacula krameri | (Scopoli, 1769)
Scopoli described the species in 1769 as Psittacus krameri, from a bird in the collection of Count Turriani; because it later moved genus, author and year are bracketed. The epithet honours Wilhelm Heinrich Kramer, a naturalist in the circle of the imperial cabinet in Vienna. Cuvier introduced the genus Psittacula in 1800, a diminutive of Latin psittacus 'parrot': little parrot. The type locality was not named in the original description and was later fixed as Senegal. The Dutch and English names both refer to the male's neck ring.