On location: parakeets in London

One of the more bizarre changes I’ve witnessed over the past 20 years or so has been the vast increase in the numbers of Indian rose-ringed parakeets on my manor. Commonly referred to as the ring-neck parakeet, Psittacula krameri manillensis is a bird of such raucousness that were I to get my hands on one, I would cheerfully wring its neck.

I first noticed them when walking to the west of London in the late 1990s – at that time there were already flocks numbering in their thousands around Kin...