By GEORGIA TASKER

Miami Herald


GEORGIA TASKER / MIAMI HERALD STAFF
Blue and gold macaws play in a hole in a dead royal palm.

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When they first arrived, I would stand motionless, lest I scare them. Even after weeks of watching them, I still pause whenever they appear.
They are gorgeous blue and gold macaws. One of them has raggedy tail feathers. Both have that unmistakable scream, deep throated and meant to be heard across the rain forest. From time to time, they set to work on the headless royal palm, ripping at the trunk with their beaks, teasing us with the thought that they might nest in the cavity they've created.
It has been a busy spring around the backyard, made even busier by the frondless royal palm.
Vying with the big three-foot parrots are two red-masked conures, who perch on the cavity's edge when the macaws aren't around. They're not as elegant as the parrots and only a third their size, but with their yellow eye rings and bright red heads, they're cuter.
Woodpeckers worked all day recently to hollow out a cavity below where the parrots were working. The next day, the pair was displaced by starlings, despite the woodpeckers' divebombing and fussing. The starlings got their comeuppance when the macaws returned and ripped away that nest.
Occasionally, whistling myna birds perch on the top of the palm, and a hawk has used it as a watchtower. Yet it is the parrots that are so fascinating to watch.
There are between 5,000 and 10,000 parrots flying free from Palm Beach County through Miami-Dade, says Bill Pranty, who is on the Florida Ornithological Society's records committee and who tallies the results of the Audubon Christmas Bird Count for the state.
''They come from private pet owners who got sick of a parrot squawking or someone losing a parrot,'' he says. ``Following Hurricane Andrew, a lot of backyard aviculturists whose screens were destroyed lost their birds. Metrozoo lost theirs.''
Dr. Susan Clubb, the avian veterinarian for the old Parrot Jungle as well as Jungle Island, says almost everyone believes the naturalized parrots have come from Parrot Jungle. Not, she says. ``During Hurricane Andrew we didn't lose a single bird.''
Twenty years ago, when Parrot Jungle was still in Pinecrest, there were macaws that flew free from the tourist attraction during the day, but were trained to return in the late afternoon to be fed and housed for the night, she said.
Yet here over the years, the parrots have multiplied, filling our multiethnic bird-sky.
Read More...DOZENS OF SPECIES

That's amazing! Even Hy's! Ruby and I may need to move to Florida! ha!

I'd have thought Texas might be next on the list.

Strange that the writer called the B&G's 'parrots' but the Conures were not in the article????

So are the birds from the weather disaster or just people losing their birds or letting them free? I'd say its is like San Fran - a mixture.

At any rate - very sweet photo. Crazy mixed up world we live in now.

I believe it is a mixture.
So many people lost their birds in 2004 after three hurricanes came through the area.
Some just escape. And I imagine some release. They find eachother in the wild and reproduce. I have even seen monkeys down here.

It must be pretty strange for anyone who has spent all their life living in Florida & can look back to a time these characters weren't around. Monkeys - oh my!

How long have you been in Florida?

I have lived here for 22 years.

I was visiting family in Coral Springs last November. On my last day, my cousin had an interview in Ft. Lauderdale so while she was doing that, I roamed Las Olas street. I was just past the little canal and near that cute pharmacy when I heard what sounded like a flock of conures. I looked up and saw a flock leave one of the trees. I wasn't close enough to identify if they were indeed conures (or take a photo) but I'm fairly certain that's what I saw.

OHHH WOW! That is a STUNNING photo of those B&Gs! If I saw that with my own eyes, I'd be stunned and amazed!!!

The rescue gets lots of displaced, free-flighted Macaws from Ft. Myers and Bonita Springs areas. Anywhere from B&Gs to Hybrids. They have to grab their tails and whip them around to grab their necks and toss them into a carrier.

I know it is a bad thing, but I just love to see parrots in natural (semi-) tropical settings. I could watch the Quakers all day. I'd love to see some Macs fly by