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File photo of a Ring-necked Parakeet on a garden feeder. Alamy Stock Photo

BirdWatch Ireland calls for reports of invasive parrot species after sightings in Dublin park

The birds have been spotted in Griffith Park in Drumcondra.

BIRDWATCH IRELAND HAS issued a call to the public to be on the lookout for a certain species of parrot that are considered invasive to native birds in Ireland.

Ring-necked Parakeets have been spotted in Griffith Park in Dublin and a survey is currently being undertaken to determine how many there are. 

The species are distinguishable by their all-green plumage, long tail and red beak. Also known as the Rose-ringed Parakeet, they get their name from the rose-coloured ring around the neck of adult male birds.

They are native to parts of Africa and Asia, but have spread to around 45 other countries and are now well established in parts of southern England and Spain.

“If you go to southern England, for example, it’s a common bird, and in places like Amsterdam and Brussels as well, they’re common in city parks and streets,” Niall Hatch of BirdWatch Ireland told The Journal.

He said that it is well-known that the populations of the bird in these countries tend to go out of control “to the extent where they can’t be contained”.

“They compete with several native species of birds for food resources and importantly for nesting sites because they nest inside holes, so some cavity nesting birds are affected by this, of our native species,” he said.

“There’s also significant agricultural costs as well because they will tend to travel in flocks and raid crop fields and raid orchards for food. That’s something that’s quite well-known with them in Southern England, Spain and places like that where they have become very well established, so that’s obviously dangerous.”

the-rose-ringed-parakeet-psittacula-krameri-also-known-as-the-ring-necked-parakeet-is-a-medium-sized-parrot-beautiful-colourful-green-parrot-cut Two Ring-necked Parakeets in a London park. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Hatch said it’s likely the parakeets were kept as pets here and escaped. He said they tend to live in urban areas and rely on bird tables and feeders in gardens as a food source. 

“They tend to make themselves unpopular with people too, because they’re beautiful to look at, gorgeous birds, but they’re incredibly noisy and they make a lot of noise between their flocks, and they also tend to come into gardens and onto bird tables and just eat everything, so that’s an issue people often have with them.”

BirdWatch Ireland are encouraging anyone who might spot the species to report any sightings to the National Biodiversity Data Centre. 

A spokesperson for the the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), who are monitoring the population of the birds, told The Journal that it is estimated that there are less than five birds attempting to breed in the Dublin area.

“It is very likely that these were once captive birds that escaped. If left alone it is likely that this population will increase over time and may well impact on Ireland’s native wildlife,” the spokesperson said.

In 2021, the service, working with the local authority and other groups, successfully re-captured a pair of Ring-necked Parakeets that were attempting to breed.

The birds were temporarily housed at an NPWS facility, and after a period of acclimatisation, the birds were then transferred to an aviary run by an experienced keeper for further long-term care.

“The NPWS continues to monitor the situation carefully”, the spokesperson added. 

Any sightings of Ring-necked Parakeets can be submitted to the National Biodiversity Data Centre (NBDC) through their online record submission page.

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    Mute Eamon Harbison
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    Aug 11th 2011, 10:37 PM

    Seems to me that Amazon has no one to blame but itself if its data center lost power…. They should have had ample UPS to bridge the utility power loss and the time their N+1 generators kick in. Also, they should have diesel tanks onsite to store at least 72hours worth to run the center on full load, and a local supplier on contract to re-fill the tanks after 24 hours. If Amazon do not have any these redundancy measures in place, I would be very surprised… If they do and they still had power loss that affected their customers services, then they need to look internally for where to point the finger of blame!

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    Mute Christopher Duffin
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    Aug 12th 2011, 9:47 AM

    Not to mention their own software hampering restoration of the downed instances and a complete lack of help from their support in trying to restore things. This has been a joke from the beginning.

    I also cannot understand why they only had power from one sub station supplying the DC. Any data centre I’ve been involved with has had power coming from at least 2 sub stations to avoid these issues.

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    Mute John Jacob
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    Aug 11th 2011, 11:15 PM

    who gives a crap really ?!?!

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    Mute Darren O'Brien
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    Aug 12th 2011, 2:42 AM

    I give a crap. Our company had a good chunk of our infrastructure down
    for 2 days because of this. Im an Irish system administrator working in Spain and this was embarrassing to say the least. We chose Amazon for its reliability and really cutting edge cloud services. The fact that its in Ireland was a bonus and made me proud that one of the best cloud facilities in Europe, if not the world, is in my home country. But we’re going to think hard about continuing with Amazon as I’m sure many others will. It’s a pity but when your company’s existence depends on servers staying on, and even minutes of downtime cost thousands in revenue and incalculable loss of reputation, you’ve got to go where you’ll be sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen.

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    Mute Damian Keane
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    Aug 12th 2011, 12:30 AM

    People who think that Ireland could make some sorely needed money by being a reliable cloud computing bridgehead for Europe.

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    Mute fitszpatrick
    Favourite fitszpatrick
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    Aug 12th 2011, 3:47 AM

    Loss of power is a serious issue. Hundreds of thousands of children on the brink of death by starvation with no back up systems. This is going to have a detrimental effect on their profitability.

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    Mute Jane Bresnan
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    Aug 12th 2011, 8:04 AM

    Maybe there was a lack of surge protection? 48 hours is a long time for a data center to be down. There must have been equipment damage. All data centers will have bought at least two independant feeds from the esb as well, were the esb supplying both from the same substation?

    It is very embarrassing for this to happen. Ireland has been trying to market itself as an ideal data center location because of the lack of extreme weather conditions, distance from earthquake zones and political stability. Top class electrical infrastructure is part of that marketing speil.

    We do not want to lose the investment and employment brought by these corporates.

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