Jimi in clear over parakeet invasion
Jimi Hendrix may have brought sex, drugs and rock’n’roll to London – but, according to a new study, he can no longer take credit for its booming parakeet population.
Various legends have sprung up to explain the city’s ring-necked parakeets, a species native to South Asia.
One holds that Hendrix, gloriously stoned and of the opinion that his lime-green parrots should be allowed to kiss the sky, released a pair – named Adam and Eve – on Carnaby Street in 1968. The story implies that they went forth and multiplied.
Now, alas, scientists using techniques usually used to track down serial criminals have shown that it is not true.
The study, published this week in the Journal of Zoology, also debunks the myth that the parakeets descend from a group released in 1951 from the set of The African Queen. The film, which starred Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, was set in equatorial east Africa but largely shot in Worton Hall Studios in Isleworth.
Instead, the research suggests that the population grew after several small-scale escapes. They may also have been boosted by ‘‘parrot fever’’ scares in the 1930s and 1950s.
Warnings of the risks to humans are likely to have pushed nervous petowners to release exotic birds, according to Sarah Cox of Goldsmiths, University of London.
The Great Storm of 1987, which wrecked countless aviaries, also appears to have played a part, with parakeet sightings rising sharply the next year.
The study used a statistical technique known as geographic profiling. Developed by criminologists, it is usually used to sort large numbers of potential suspects for serial crimes such as murder.
This typically involves recording the location of, say, murder victims’ bodies. This information can then be used to determine where the murderer is most likely to live or work, even if no pattern is visible to the human eye.
Instead of crimes, the study used the location of parakeet sightings in Britain over the past 50 years. The potential sites of introduction into the country were treated as ‘‘suspects’’.
There was no hint that either Carnaby Street or Worton Hall Studios was the source of the parakeet population.
The results were a little disappointing, the researchers admitted. ‘‘I would have loved the Jimi Hendrix story to have been true, but sadly not,’’ Sally Faulkner, of Queen Mary University of London, said.
Dr Faulkner has used the same technique with patients’ locations to find the breeding grounds of malaria-infected mosquitoes in Egypt.
The parakeet study was led by Steven Le Comber, of Queen Mary
University of London, who died before it was published. Before his death he said: ‘‘Our research only found evidence to support the belief of most ornithologists: the spread of parakeets in the UK is likely a consequence of repeated releases and introductions, and nothing to do with publicity stunts by musicians or movie stars.’’
However they got here, the parakeets – or ‘‘posh parrots’’ as they’re sometimes called – have made themselves at home. According
to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Britain has about 8600 breeding pairs, outnumbering barn owls, nightingales and kingfishers.
The first family group appears to have been spotted in Kent in 1969. Their range appears to have expanded in the 1970s, with records of nests in Greater Manchester, Surrey, Essex, Middlesex and Berkshire. The first recorded sighting of a single bird was in 1855 in Norfolk, long before Hendrix.