ML361594981
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age and sex
- Adult, Unknown sex - 1
- Sounds
- Call
- Playback
- Playback not used
Observation details
Lifer species and family! I heard the calls coming from a tree in someone's yard across the street from the park. Eventually I could tell there was a second one coming from a different street, and then one flew in a nice big arc around me and over to another tree where I could actually see it. Unfortunately, those looks I got were severely backlit. The most striking feature I noticed was how small these birds are. They're only the third bird in the parrot family I've seen in the wild, and the other two are much larger. This one had a very long thin tail, even for a parakeet, and seemed to have almost uniform green plumage although I could tell there was something delineating the head from the body. Unfortunately I never got a good look at that rosy ring. Their calls are much higher than their distant Psittacara cousins I've seen in the Bay Area. They almost sound like they could be from some kind of chatty passerine. They made a variety of sounds, but one of the more common calls I heard would probably look something like an upside down check mark, or perhaps just a little tick followed by a a steep decline. The first note is very short (maybe 0.1 seconds?) and perhaps slightly upsliding, and the second note, which really doesn't have any break between it and the first, starts a good deal higher, quickly slides down, and only lasts 2 or 3 times as long as the first little one. My family and I stopped at this park on our drive back home to the Bay Area from Las Vegas. My wife really loves Cafe Rio, but somehow we managed not to think of looking for them in Las Vegas and only noticed one on our very last day. I told her there was one in Bakersfield we could possibly stop at on the way home and proceeded to see if there were any new birds I could try to see if we stopped there. As it happened, there were a couple! Who cares if they're both introduced species; they're cool! Well it turned out she couldn't wait that long and ended up getting her coveted Pork Barbacoa burrito at 10:30 in the morning while still on our way out of Vegas. We would get to Bakersfield sometime around 3, and I wasn't sure that would end up being a good time to stop. But as the drive went on, the kids weren't fussing at noon and actually fell asleep for the next few hours. By the time we did get to Bakersfield, we felt like we needed to stop, whether they were asking for lunch or not, so I was going to get my chance after all! We stopped and got out the lunches, and I perked up my eyes and ears. I was pretty sure I heard one parakeet almost right away, but afterwards all I could hear were some very chatty goldfinches, which I knew to be good mimics. I finished eating lunch without hearing them again and had to turn at least some of my focus to keeping my young kids from running into the street or eating the grass! It was starting to seem like we might need to get back on the road before I would be sure if I had even heard these birds when one of them suddenly started calling persistently. Nice! There was no way that was a goldfinch. Despite there being traffic not far away, I was able to get an at least audible recording, and shortly after that I got to see one take flight. I saw roughly where it landed and could tell it was in view, despite being back-lit. I used the old "spray-and-pray" method of shooting the whole area and hoping the bird would end up in-frame for at least one shot. The result is about as good as you'd expect, but at least I can document the sighting. I just learned this week that this is the most widely transplanted parrot in the world in terms of how many countries it is now established in, but Bakersfield is the best place in the US to see them. That seems kind of random, but I'm not complaining! I happened to have set a goal of seeing 12 new species on this trip and sort of thought I had just missed it as we left Las Vegas with 11, but voilà! Goal met.
Technical information
- Recorder
- Microphone
- Accessories
- Original file size
- 87.75 KB