29 Aug 2018

29 Aug 18 - Green Apple Thieves

There are a few Dorset Birders who make the annual visit to the Studland village area to see Ring-necked Parakeet for the Dorset Year Lists & in some cases, having to make more than one visit before they are successful. This is a species I will bump into them throughout the year given it's part of the Studland patch & they can often be heard squawking from the Middle or South Beach car parks & generally fly into view soon after. But they have been a bit more irregular in the last few years. However, I've not visited the Middle Beach to check for Divers & Grebes as much in the last year or two & think they are missing me as one started irregularly appearing last year around my house. This year when I got back from the Atlantic Odyssey, I was seeing one or two more regularly locally. So, I was not overly surprised when I saw a flock of four about a month ago & confirmed that there were two juveniles in the flock. This has now increased to three juveniles, as well as, the two parents. This morning after seeing all five in a neighbour's tree, two soon after dropped into my apple tree for early morning breakfast.
Ring-necked Parakeet: Adult
Ring-necked Parakeet: Juv. Good to see a youngster being taught to eat fruit
Ring-necked Parakeet: Juv
I never had to make much effort to see them each year in Dorset & now I have to make even less effort. This is probably one of their first times for successful breeding away from Studland where about ten Ring-necked Parakeets were released by a previous owner of the village pub in the late 1980s.