Colour Bomb Ahoy ! The Long Tailed Parakeet

South Andaman | Pics : 1 - 4 Female ; Pics : 5 - 12 Male Long Tailed Parakeet

I knew Id be meeting them. What I didn’t expect is for them to be so in my face when I did. I see parakeets all the time out in the forests but I guess what I wasn’t used to is the birds pretty much owning that territory and showing it in their behavior. Now, Long Tailed Parakeets are related to the Red Breasted Parakeet which I also saw in South Andaman. Apparently, people have reported sightings of flocks of hundreds of these guys in the Andaman Islands which I don’t doubt happens even now, given that we don’t have access to most of the islands. They aren’t giving out passes to Nicobar to even us nature guys at this time, btw. They’re building something in Nicobar and well, our 600 - 800 mm lenses are obviously not wanted around anything of strategic importance to the nation. There are 572 islands here and only 38 are inhabited by humans and a much lesser number of islands are accessible to non islanders. So who knows?

It’s my first parakeet post so I’ll put a couple of things down right here. One, the whole, “India has all parakeets & only one parrot” jargon bit that wild lifers throw at noobs all the time. Parakeets, are a kind of parrot just as Dachshund is a kind of dog. Two, it’s illegal to keep endemic ones at home in India, period. Our desi birds have been given the right to freedom. Your friend’s wife who doesn’t like you can send you off for 3 years and with a fine of 1 Lakh as icing on the cake if you have one at home and she makes a call. So, if it visits you as a friend oh by all means be a friend. But do not consider them pets or prisoners. Your friend will fly home to the woods after the visit and maybe come back in a couple days. They’re intelligent animals but not all intelligent animals should be pets.

Right, so where we saw them had trees full of ripe fruit. In fact, all of the island was in bloom with fruit and my couple had set up home right in the territory to access that. Incidentally, the regions fruit trees are a major attraction for migratory birds and being that it’s the fruit that draws the migration, bird hides are totally banned here. These animals have been genetically programmed to feed and move from one area to another and to do it on repeat. Now, to tinker with this balance would really be fools work, imho.

Like most parakeets, these guys were brave and always maintained eye contact. Yeah, they keep an eye out. What I especially loved was watching the male eat. He was so gentle with the fruit, scooping it out slowly while he watched the funny man with the big lens. Needless to say that it being a well lit afternoon and them watching me watching them, got me the results that I wanted. Nothing hurried about these guys at all, lots of colour all around and time to frame and execute my shots. Photographing these guys was all about finding the gap in the foliage and by the time I’d find that gap again in case my guy moved, his or her eyes would find me again as well.

They’re just so damn cute, these guys and are the latest addition to my list of parakeets that I’ve seen in India. Rumor mill has it that they won’t open Nicobar till 2028 for us camera toting crazies. Well, I guess there’s no way to finish the list of Indian parakeets until I’ve seen the Nicobar Parakeet now is there?