Boston Wildlife

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#bancars

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I haven't seen a thread dedicated to animals or birds spotted in urban contexts in Boston and surrounding areas (mods please delete/move if there is such a thread). I always like watching the cormorants in the Fort Point Channel so I thought I would start a thread since we do have a fair number of critters in our city.

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I've posted him here before but caught a snowy owl chilling at Castle Island last December. Was an exciting spot as we had previously done a dune hike in Ipswich to look for them and didn't see any, and then here we were in Southie of all places and he's right there for all to see.
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The Porter Square pigeon flock is consistently hilarious to me behavior-wise. Passed through Porter on a rainy day recently and most of them had clustered on these rock formations so as to avoid the puddles.

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Not strictly wildlife, but I just recently learned of the Fulmore Park chickens in Cambridgeport from this thread on reddit. Decided to check out the park myself and ran into two of the chickens! There appears to be a coop under the back porch of the triple decker on Sidney St that abuts the park (you can see the grating in the last photo).

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Anyone know if the monk parakeets still live in east boston?
 
I know there have been monk parakeets in east boston, theres also a famous population in new york that is rumored to have escaped from the jfk airport and set up shop in the surrounding neighborhoods.

History of the Brooklyn Parrots
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https://www.exp1.com/blog/untold-nyc-history-brooklyn-parrots/

I hadnt looked in to whether theyre still around in Boston for a while. Heres a universalhub article from 2010.

The wild parakeets of East Boston
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https://www.universalhub.com/2010/wild-parrots-east-boston

Well come to find out theyre still around and theres an article about them in winthrop as recently as 2021

Winthrop is for the birds - exotic birds that build large nests
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https://www.universalhub.com/files/styles/main_image/public/images/2021/polly1.jpg?itok=CPMckLie

Pretty interesting that theyre still around. Theres not a whole lot of information about them up here, but theyre able to survive in cold climates due to the large nests that they build. Pretty wild that we have a wild parrot population in boston!
 
stick n move said:
I know there have been monk parakeets in east boston, theres also a famous population in new york that is rumored to have escaped from the jfk airport and set up shop in the surrounding neighborhoods.

History of the Brooklyn Parrots
View attachment 38993

https://www.exp1.com/blog/untold-nyc-history-brooklyn-parrots/

I hadnt looked in to whether theyre still around in Boston for a while. Heres a universalhub article from 2010.

The wild parakeets of East Boston
View attachment 38994

https://www.universalhub.com/2010/wild-parrots-east-boston

Well come to find out theyre still around and theres an article about them in winthrop as recently as 2021

Winthrop is for the birds - exotic birds that build large nests
View attachment 38995https://www.universalhub.com/files/styles/main_image/public/images/2021/polly1.jpg?itok=CPMckLie

Pretty interesting that theyre still around. Theres not a whole lot of information about them up here, but theyre able to survive in cold climates due to the large nests that they build. Pretty wild that we have a wild parrot population in boston!
Click to expand...

This is so interesting--had no idea! There's a very large feral flock of these birds in Brussels, Belgium, as well (or at least there were as of this article in 2014) that are descendants of some birds that were released there in the 1970s. I studied abroad in Brussels in 2012 and would see these birds in parks all over the place--it was a very bizarre site!

www.thebulletin.be

Brussels parakeet population out of control

The Brussels-Capital Region has not yet found a solution to the rising number of parakeets in the city, currently estimated at around 12,000. The city has tried different measures without effect, and has now moved on to destroying nesting sites and employing scare tactics, reports...
www.thebulletin.be www.thebulletin.be
 
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