Gentrification Vampires? Try Parakeets

City Point’s busiest crew of home renovators have won admiration of some neighbors, while alienating others worried about the safety of new aerial stick-built multifamily condos.

The aerial homes have been clustering on Howard Avenue and Sea Street.

One of them collapsed into the street. And the builders refused to help clean up the debris.

The builders happen to be birds. Monk parakeets. The condos are nests that have been multiplying in the neighborhood by the harbor.

City Point neighbor Warren Seacord ended up hauling away the fallen nest on his own.

“They’re very dangerous. If that fell down, it would make a huge dent in your car,” said Raquel Seacord.

“It could kill you if it hit you right,” added Warren, Raquel’s husband.

While most parrot species nest in tree hollows, monk parakeets build their own large, multifamily nests from twigs. Often 20 to 40 birds live in one of these condos, with separate entrances for different families.

Four of the condos are located right outside the Seacords’ home at the corner of Howard and Sea. Neighbors have watched the number of nests have grown over the last year.

Monk parakeets first arrived in Connecticut from Argentina in the mid-1970s, according to the Audubon Christmas Bird Count. They became trendy pets in the United States in the 1960s and are still beloved around the world for their ability to imitate human speech. 

Like a few other, non-native parrot species, the pet birds escaped or were released and established feral communities around the United States. The urban legend in New Haven is that monk parakeets fled to the city after a pet transport truck crashed.

City Point neighbor Mindy Roseman tells her children a different version of the tale — the parakeets escaped from a pirate ship navigating the Long Island Sound.

Whether they arrived via truck, pirate ship or exhausted pet owner, monk parakeets have been in City Point since at least 2007. The Independent has documented their illicit housing choices on utility poles and dying trees in the neighborhood.

Roseman, her children and her husband most often see the neon green birds as they collect twigs to build their nests.

“My husband has this whole dialogue about what they are saying about the sticks,” Roseman said.

She has lived in in City Point for five years. She’s had the birds as neighbors the whole time. They seem to have expanded the number of nests in the Howard Avenue and Sea Street tree this year, though.

Another flock of monk parakeets has migrated around the edge of Edgewood Park for years, according to city Outdoor Adventure Coordinator Martin Torresquintero. They had a run-in with United Illuminating, which objected to them living rent-free on the utility poles. (This relocation and euthanasia campaign was controversial.) Bald eagles took over another parakeet nest location.

After being preyed on by hawks and humans with BB guns, the parakeets found a safer spot on Water Street, where they currently live.

The monk parakeets’ survival so far north of their native habitat is part adaptation, part evidence of climate change, Torresquintero said.

“They like to build their nests in areas with heat and sun exposure. Thus, the problem for the utilities, as they build nests on top or near transformers, causing them to overheat and lead to power failures and damaged equipment,” Torresquintero said. ​“We [city parks’ tree division] have not had any issues with them in a few years.”

The parks department relocates the nests when they become a public danger or are stuck in trees downed by storms.

To the Seacords, the nests are always a public danger. They have seen four nests fall over the years. The city was taking too long to clean up one time, so Warren Seacord towed the dense mound of sticks out of his parking spot himself with a truck. The condos are several hundred pounds and will not budge otherwise.

As the Seacords spoke, the largest nest hovered ominously over the parking lane in front of their house. It has bent its tree-limb host earthwards, in seeming demonstration of what happens. The nests usually stay secure during storms; they fall when their host branch snaps under the weight or a strong gust of wind.

Warren Seacord compared the parakeets’ behavior to the proper etiquette the native birds demonstrate. They squawk, not chirp, he explained. They never hop from branch to branch.

Instead, the only parakeets visible that afternoon were flying straight from their nests to other trees. They returned with long sticks, which they tucked carefully into the smaller nests.

Raquel Seacord doesn’t see the parakeets picking up fallen sticks from the ground. She sees them snap live twigs off bushes and trees with their beaks.

One parakeet peeked out of the opening of one nest a few times to observe the Independent’s observation efforts.

The native birds seemed unconcerned about the native-non-native distinction. Small, gray finches fluttered in and out of the largest, most precarious nest. Cardinals (like the one pictured above) and crows perched in neighboring trees. A hawk passed by overhead.

The Seacords don’t like the parakeets’ proximity to their home. The parakeets, though, appear happy where they are.

City Point neighbor Jason Bartlett pointed out that the same tree species lines the rest of the block. The rest of the trees are condo-free.

His two dogs chase other birds but leave the parakeets alone. Bartlett himself appreciates the birds’ bright green plumage.

“I love them. I used to live across the street,” said Bartlett, a former city government youth director.

“I’m amazed that after all these storms, these nests have not moved. They have grown and grown. It’s an amazing thing to watch. There must be hundreds of parakeets in this one tree.”