Untitled Document

Friday, July 25, 1997
PSE&G DESTROYS PARAKEETS NESTS IN EDGEWATER

There's hardly a soul left on Hilliard Avenue who can remember life before the parakeets.

For 20 years, Bob Vogel has watched them steal buds and branches from the linden tree in his front yard. Jeanne Murphy, 23, recalls waking to their chatter almost every morning as a child on summer vacation.

And Paul Kemp has whiled away hours tracing the gray-green acrobats that twirl through the treetops and utility wires outside the drugstore where he works."If you live in this part of Edgewater, the parakeets are part of your life,"Kemp said. "This has always been their home, and it always will be."

Not if the state gets its way.

This week, biologists with the New Jersey Division of Fish, Game, and Wildlife and workers from Public Service Electric and Gas Co. arrived on Hilliard Avenue to tear down the nests where the birds lived.

Using a cherry picker and long poles with metal hooks, they dismembered a half-dozen of the massive, 20-inch deep nests the parakeets had built under utility transformers on Hilliard Avenue, Edgewater Place, and Columbia Terrace.

The workers found seven eggs and a single nestling, which was taken to a parrot breeder in New York. (Parakeets are members of the parrot family.) A spokesman for PSE&G said the eggs will be preserved for study.

It was the second time in four years that PSE&G, with the state's sanction, had mounted an assault on Edgewater's exotic bird population.

The colony of perhaps 80 to 90 parakeets, known as monk or quaker parakeets, is the largest in New Jersey.

State officials say they must nip the South American natives before they breed out of control and spread to agricultural areas where they might devour fruit and grain crops. They say New Jersey has no room for another interloper such as the European starling, an aggressive bird known to invade the nests of native fauna.

"Nobody likes destroying nests and moving those birds. But if we don't do it now we could have a much bigger problem down the road,"said Paul Kalka, a zoologist with the state Division of Fish and Game who says the number of wild parakeet flocks is on the rise.

"We'll continue to seek out these birds wherever we find them,"he said."They may not be trouble now, but once they spread they'll create havoc. They have been known to bite into utility wires and explode transformers."

Residents of Hilliard Avenue don't understand the fuss over a breed that bird lovers describe as friendly and adept at learning to speak.

Although it is illegal to own or sell them in New Jersey, the birds are popular pets in many states, including Florida, where one fan writes a monthly 24-page "Quaker Newsletter."

In Edgewater, the Hilliard Avenue neighborhood has become a destination for birders and sightseers. Visitors to the post office often search for a flash of the quaker's bright blue flight wings.

Residents have installed birdbaths and feeders, and have even hung parrot pennants from their porches. They have entertained hundreds of questions from the curious, led impromptu birding promenades to Edgewater Place and Columbia Terrace, and followed the growth of baby birds and the deaths of old ones.

They have watched in awe as the 10-inch-high birds build complex, multifamily nests out of twigs and bits of vine."Bird condos, that's what they are. Amazing," said Tom Rock, 15.

Rock and his neighbors say the parakeets live side-by-side with pigeons and other native birds. In fact, they seem to almost have become native. That's why residents bristled when the electric company showed up this week.

"These birds have been here for years and they are absolutely no harm to farmers or other birds,"Stephen Gidro-Frank said."I mean, how can they be a threat to agriculture in Edgewater? The last time I looked, there weren't exactly a lot of farms and orchards in this part of Bergen County."

Carol Bauer, a North Bergen resident who has operated a parrot breeding business for 18 years, agreed that the state was spinning its wheels trying to roust the parakeets.

The quaker, she said, can be found in small pockets across the Hudson River shoreline and in other areas of New Jersey and New York.

They have never been known to attack other birds or invade farmers fields, she said.

"A perfectly harmless bird, and that's a fact,"Bauer said."They survive because they are hard-working and very intelligent. They can find plenty to eat without plundering other birds nests."

But the birds grew to be such a pest in their native South America that the Argentinian government began searching out their nests and destroying their eggs. Environmental experts say they would colonize farms in the northeast United States if left unchecked.

"Once any exotic species gets loose, we could be in for big trouble,"said Rich Kane, conservation director of the 17,000-member New Jersey Audubon Society."These parakeets will wreak havoc if not controlled. They just don't belong here."

Kane says the quaker parakeets were probably introduced into New Jersey and New York in the late 1960s when they escaped from a smuggler.

They took Manhattan by siege, he said, building nests on air conditioners and fire escapes. The city was eventually forced to collect and destroy their eggs.

At this point, Kane says, there is only one humane answer for the New Jersey birds:"Round them up and ship them back to Argentina."

PSE&G says it may even begin trapping Edgewater's parakeets and shipping them out-of-state.

On Hilliard Avenue, where green lines of suddenly homeless parakeets were lining up on the utility wires Wednesday night, residents were skeptical.

"The state just doesn't realize one thing, that these birds are a lot smarter than them,"Rock said."I think these little guys are going to be here a lot longer."

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FAST FACTS

NAME: Quaker, or monk, parakeet
SIZE: 11 to 12 inches
WEIGHT: About 1 to 2 pounds
COLORS: Gray head with a dull green body and bright green wings and tail; vivid blue feathers edged in black
LIFESPAN: 15 to 20 years
FOOD: Seeds, fruit, buds
NATURAL HABITAT: Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina
PERSONALITY TRAITS: Bright, noisy, and industrious. Only parrot known to build nests. Most talkative parrot breed. COST: $250 to $300 in New York pet stores. Illegal to keep or breed in New Jersey.