Rogue parrot goes on car-wrecking rampage as locals face enormous restore payments
A rogue parakeet has been terrorising Inverness’s Lochardil area since February, ripping up car window seals and windscreen wipers and leaving residents facing repair bills
A parrot is wreaking havoc in a Scottish neighbourhood(Image: STV News/Youtube)
A parrot is wreaking havoc in a Scottish neighbourhood, causing hundreds of pounds worth of damage and leaving residents feeling exasperated. The bird has been identified as a parakeet, a small, highly social parrot known for its slender body and long, tapered tail.
Since February, the rebellious parrot has been spotted swooping around the Lochardil area in the south-western suburbs of Inverness, Scotland. Locals say the bird is often seen tearing at window seals and windscreen wipers, ripping out large pieces of rubber.
“Parakeet is not a good word round here in Inverness,” local resident Cathleen MacKinnon told the BBC. “This little chap causes havoc on the cars around here.”
She told BBC Radio Scotland’s Out of Doors: “I have never seen the bird – I have just seen the damage it causes.” Some neighbours have started throwing tarpaulins over their vehicles in a bid to stop the attacks, while one resident is said to have forked out £800 for repairs.
Another local, Chrissanne Robertson, said the bird first appeared in their street earlier this year. She said: “And of course, we all thought it looked lovely, until we saw the damage it was doing to the cars.
“He’s done a lot of damage to cars up and down the street and we can’t do anything about it.” She believes the total bill runs into the thousands of pounds.
Roobertson continued: “Sometimes we’ll see him, sometimes we won’t. Sometimes it leaves, it can be away for a couple of weeks, and we think, ‘oh we won’t see it again’, but then somebody will go out the next day and you’ll here a shout of ‘he’s back again!’.”
Robertson said they had contacted RSPB Scotland, the Scottish SPCA and NatureScot, but none could offer help. She said: “We’re trying everything, but the bird is still here,” she said.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do – we laugh about it some days and cry other days.” Seeing parakeets living wild in the UK is now entirely normal.
Although they are an introduced, non-native species, they have become established here and are widely regarded as the UK’s only naturalised parrot. For years they were most heavily concentrated in Greater London and the South East, but they have since spread into other towns and cities.
Sightings are increasingly reported well beyond their traditional strongholds, including in major urban areas and parts of Scotland. The birds most commonly seen are ring-necked parakeets, also known as rose-ringed parakeets.
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