THE PARROTS IN SAN FRANCISCO

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Best known as the Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill... Except that now, they have expanded their crowd, and migrated for some of them (lot of them) everywhere in SF.

Threir story briefly...

They appeared in San Francisco about 30 years ago.

Call them wild parrots, cherry-headed conures, red masked parakeets (actually, it is our favorite one!), it does not really matter.

They used to live in jungles and forests in Equador and Peru.

There was a time (before 1993) it was rather easy and pretty cheap to get these cute, not that little, green birds. What their new owners were going to learn pretty quickly is that they were not called wild by random. Captivity is not their thing (this being said, who's thing is it?). Most of them have been released by their disappointed owners.

Their community bloomed at Telegraph Hill. A certain Mark Bittner took care of them. There are even a documentary (2003) and a book telling the whole story.

Since then, as we already said, our little flying, masked elfes popped up a bit everywhere in the city. One of their favorite spots is the tiny dog park leading to the Muni stop at Carl and Cole. They screech like crazy and fly over the neighborhood in supersonic flocks as if they were escaping a dangerous threat.

It has been months since we tried to take a picture of them. They were either too quick, too far, too high, too ''in backlighting''... whatever. We just had to go back to their primary shelter land: North Beach. And still they tried to camouflage themselves, but they could not deceive us! So yes, one of the best location to take pictures is down the stairs close to Julius' Castle. They may be wild, but not that savage over there.