The 9 Best Kept Secrets In Brooklyn
c/o Brooklyn Parrots
The Wild Parrots of Brooklyn
There are very few times in my life that I felt like I literally couldn’t believe my eyes (what? I’ve seen a lot), but one of those times was a few years ago when I was walking in Midwood near the Brooklyn College campus. The air around me was full of vaguely tropical chattering, which gave my walk a feeling of slight cognitive dissonance—this was Brooklyn, after all, nothing tropical to see here. Or so I thought. And that’s when I noticed that the trees around me were filled with birds. Not pigeons or sparrows or anything so humble, but with bright green wild parrots. These birds have lived in Brooklyn since the 1970s, when they escaped from a shipping container that had come to JFK from Argentina. Mostly, you can find these birds in the area around Brooklyn College (nests are built high up on top of light poles surrounding the athletic field) and Greenwood Cemetery. For the Jonathan Franzen-wannabes of the world, Brooklyn is an ornithological treasure trove.
