Parakeets bring touch of Africa to Surrey skies

You hear them before you see them - the screeching 'kee-ak' sound of a swooping 7,000-strong flock of exotic parakeets that have taken over a small corner of Southern England.

Their shrill cacophony drowns out the tuneful song of our more familiar garden birds and is driving local fruit growers and farmers to despair as they devour the crops for miles around.



The exotic flock is roosting in a collection of tall poplar trees at Esher Rugby Club in Surrey, and there are complaints that the birds - which originate in Northern India but live in a variety of habitats in Australia, Asia, Central and South America and parts of Africa - are driving away domestic birds.

Their arrival in Britain remains in the domain of urban myth. Many believe them to be descendants of a pair of parakeets that escaped during filming of The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, at Shepperton Studios in 1951.

Others claim they were released from aviaries damaged during the great storm of 1987, while some people even credit rock legend Jimi Hendrix with freeing the first pair of parakeets into the British countryside.

There's a small slideshow here.