BOLZANO. Colorful, cheerful, but also harmful to native speciesAnd. They are the parrots who, in Bolzano, have established very numerous colonies occupying vital spaces of sparrows and woodpeckers which are disappearing in the city.
They nest in the Talvera park but also in other areas of the city. In via Genova or via Milano you can see them, especially in summer, perched in the trees while chatting with each other as if conversing. “The species is clearly not native,” he explains Federica Ardizzoneveterinary doctor, expert in avian medicine at the Südtirol Exotica Vets veterinary clinic, directed by Vincenzo Mulè.
«Those who live in Bolzano are Collared Parakeets, and it is a mistake to think that they live in forests with a particularly hot climate. The parakeet is a species that lives mainly in Asia, in large numbers between India and Nepal, and adapts to cities or plateaus with a not very hot climate”, he explains.
It is practically the identikit of Bolzano. How they arrived in South Tyrol remains a mystery. According to some urban legend, due to the psychosis that avian influenza created a few decades ago, people began to release the birds they had at home. The less resistant species died at the first cold or from starvation, while the parakeets found the suitable habitat and proliferated.
«I don’t know if it’s true or not – says the veterinary expert – I believe that they arrived, however, from Veneto, where there have been many of them for some time also because it is a species that has a certain flight autonomy, even tens of kilometers per day. The diffusion, then, is motivated by the high reproductive capacity.
«Two clutches a year and up to five eggs, but longevity also facilitates its diffusion». A parakeet, in fact, can “live more than 30 years”, when the average age of birds is generally around 4 years. “Here in Via Genova I often see them on the trees eating persimmons when the fruit is ripe,” says a resident.
And in fact, food versatility is also one of their strong points. «They feed on seeds in general, but also on fruit and, if necessary, insects. This makes their presence invasive to the detriment of native species that are disappearing in the city”, says Federica Ardizzone. «Woodpeckers and passerines are seen less and less, because the presence of parrots has narrowed their “ecological niche” by taking away the cavities in the trees useful for nests, and also because of the competition in finding food». Not a physical clash between species, therefore, but a sort of struggle for housing and food in which the natives succumb. Among other things, the bad news for sparrows and woodpeckers is not over: «It is easy to hypothesize the imminent arrival of the monk parakeet native to South America. It hasn’t been seen in Bolzano yet but there are many in Veneto.”