Dallas - Home to the Wild Parakeets?

      A few weeks ago I was driving home and noticed a parrot flying in my neighborhood. Like any other person, I thought, "Wow, a parrot, flying around my neighborhood." I felt a bit saddened that somebody's pet had escaped and probably wouldn't survive in the wild for long.

      A week later, I saw 2 more parakeets. I started to think there might be more than just a few escaped parrots flying around East Dallas. After a little research, I discovered that White Rock Lake is home to a rather large parakeet colony. (Another thing I learned, parakeets are a type of parrots.)

     Apparently, a few escaped parakeets found a home on a electrical substation that generates enough heat to make their nest warm enough to live year round. A couple of escaped parakeets became a colony over the course of many years. I drove around the White Rock area and found the substation behind the dam about 200 yards southwest of the old pumphouse. The best time to spot the parrots is at dusk, when they return to their giant nests. It's quite a site, to see the colony of South American birds return home each night. Hats of to TU Electric which decided to leaved the parrots undisturbed after East Dallas neighbors voiced theire desire to leave the colony intact.

     I mentioned this discovery one morning on our radio show and received reports of similar colonies on electrical substations in Irving and Everman.


Directions The Parakeet's nests are about the High Voltage towers across from the White Rock Lake Filter Building

 I never would have imagined that in the year since moving to East Dallas, I would have spotted parrots flying around my neighborhood. I add them to my list that includes foxes, hawks, coyotes and Gary Cogill.






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9 comments:

  1. I saw a whole flock flying beside I75

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  2. I saw 3 parrots flying together out in Mesquite in the Westover park area on July 6 2012

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  3. Just saw a couple of parrots out in my tree this morning in Garland, just South of Buckingham Road. Beautiful. July 15,2012.

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  4. I live next to Wyche Park in Irving,TX and there are 3 to 4 mesquite trees in the park along with many other trees. Well, the parrots eat the seed pods off the mesquite trees. I just starting seeing the parrots in the one mesquite trees, at 7:30 am you can see them in the trees. I saw 7 of them in the one tree on Sat. and got pics and then Sunday I seen them and was about to take some pics and they didn't like me around this time and flew off. But I know they will be back around 7:30 every morning until the beans are gone.

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  5. We operate Curiosity Shop in Irving which is right next to a substation on Parkside. There are at least 100 parrots that we get to enjoy every day. I'm able to walk up very close to the trees they perch in and they do not seem to mind. They are very noisy and a bit messy but we still enjoy watching them

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  6. I just saw a whole flock (at least a dozen)in the 75228 zip code area on July 28 2013. And yesterday I saw a flock of huge blue birds, I dont know what they were. Today I saw a bunch of singing birds and cardinals. Here at Ferguson and Peavy.

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  7. I'm not quite sure what I saw today, but it was a flock of very green birds (the same shade as the leaves of the trees they were in, so I could only see them when they flew). They didn't look real big.....just kinda of average, like maybe Cardinal size...and they made a sound (a very loud sound) more like a parrot would make, certainly not a 'chirp' or song like a 'regular' bird. This was by the Whole Foods on Greenville by Walnut Hill.

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  8. There's another colony at Trammel Dr and Abrams.

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  9. I live in south Grand Prairie, Texas and this past 2 weeks (during the ice and snow weather) I noticed on our backyard bird feeder there were 4 green parrots. They were really hungry so I made sure to supply plenty of bird seed on top off the snow. There returned everyday for about 4 days!! I was so excited I even went and bought another feeder. Now that the weather has improved I have not seen them feeding. So I hope they are still in the area.

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