I don't know if it's really a good thing, but it's amazing to see a bunch of these flying around in London.

Any idea where they came from?

Someones pets released. Once you get a few groups of them loosed they'll never go away.

We have Parrots, Macaws, and all other kinda jungle birds roamin' around town ... if you think giant crows are loud wait til you get a couple Macaws squakin' in the top of a palm tree ... makes you wanna reach for the 10GA ...

Someone said they are Australian Ring Neck Parrots.
But I'm not sure.

I regularly see flocks of 20 or 30 monk parrots in north east Dallas roaming around. It is pretty strange to look on the edge of a parking lot and see parrots mixed in with a group of pigeons.

Ever so often I see a flight of 6-8 birds pictured above. Apparently they are doing jus fine here in Southeast Texas.

These birds are Ring-necked parakeets. Over the years more and more escaped from homes and shops, sometimes mass escapes from domestic aviaries. They are Asian birds that can be commonly seen in Indian sal forest and farmland. However, they can be very readily seen and heard in Richmond Park, London. They now occur right across southern and central England. They are fiercely competitive and will oust othe r hole nesting birds such as woodpeckers and tawny owls. They have also become a serious pest in orchrads in SE England. Of course they are lively, interesting, pretty and engaging birds, so any serious efforts to control numbers or eradicate local populations is met with howls of protest.

You may or may not remember,I posted some pics of a bird I incidentally photographed here in minnesota last summer,that bore strong resemblance to a monk parakeet.

I actually have been seeing these guys around my work a lot more frequently lately. Just this morning I saw about 30 sitting in a tree making a lot of racket.

The monk parakeet as pictured above in Texas, is a common bird in South America. There are about 65 differnt varieties of parakeet and parrotlet in South America, some bearing great resemblance to the first picture.

Dallas has a colony of parrots that reside near a large transformer substation, rather than migrating, simply use the stations ambient heat for wintering.

THere is a sizeable colony in the city park in Innsbruk, Austria as well. I was there skiing a few years back and saw about 6 in the snow. The locals said they were pets that survived but there was a breeding colony there.