The Parrots of Sunnyvale

Photo credit to Katie Slider. Link to Flickr photostream is at the bottom

This post had been in compilation for a while, but, faltered due to the fact that I lacked any photographs of my own to prove my assertions that they do indeed exist. However, I have discovered a few videos to verify the assertions - it's apparently a really well known phenomena around here!

Let me back up. When I first moved to Sunnyvale from Palo Alto (or Shallow Alto as my hellmouth companions are fond of calling it), I was haunted ay the sounds of these - animals. I wasn't sure what they were, but figured they were some sort of exotic bird. Go figure, right? I thought based on the sound they were some hefty predatory animal, but until about two weeks ago, I had never seen the actual source of the noise.

Two weeks ago, I'm going for my cup of morning joe at Starbucks at Mathilda and El Camino at that newish shopping center built on the former orchard. I'm getting out of the car, and I see these odd looking green birds hanging around on the roof of the building. And I do a double take. They're f'in parrots? And then they start squawking. Holy crap, we've got wild parrots? Has hell frozen over? Then I remind myself that I do live in the hellmouth, and that occurrences such as these are not the exception, they are the norm.

I turned on my heel, went for my coffee, and they left me a number of presents all over my car. That's it, I vowed. Time to exact my revenge. Break out the Nikon DSLR and the telephoto lens, and get their mug shots, or so I thought.

My methodology for tracking them based on sound turned out to be remarkably flawed. I must have driven just about every through street in Sunnyvale, windows down, radio off, listening for their haunting squawk. Well, when they don't want to be found, they won't be found. Damn blast, they knew I had it in for them.

Somebody else had a similar idea - and actually took some surprisingly good video of these gorgeous birds.



Link to a local organization that rescues these parrots.
Katie Slider's Flickr page for photos