Parakeets in Brooklyn

On our way out of the apartment this morning Rob screamed, "oh my gosh...look at all these parakeets". I ran to the window with the camera and saw about 20 green "Christmas" parakeets in our backyard!

Theories about how these birds ended up in Brooklyn's Greenwood Cemetery:

• The Great Escape of 1967: a shipment from Argentina arrived at JFK and some unauthorized pilfering mistakenly released hundreds of monk parrots.
• A pet store on Flatbush Avenue went out of business and released them.
• A truck overturned on a highway.
• The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, after many years of hosting a captive flock of monk parakeets, abandoned these birds to the skies after closing its aviary.