Alexandrine parakeet | Psittacula eupatria

Voice

Deep, harsh and resonant: a loud kee-aar or kee-yah, a rolling rraaa and a dry, rattling klak-klak-klak. Everything sounds a good deal lower and fuller than the shrill screech of the Rose-ringed Parakeet, and in a mixed flock that difference in pitch is the most useful thing you have. At the roost and around the nest hole there is also a chatter of short, yapping notes. Heard year round, most of all towards dusk.

Identification

Large, heavily built parakeet of 56–62 cm, more than half of which is tail. Grass-green, with a blue-grey wash over the hindcrown and cheeks and a yellow-green belly. Two features clinch it. First the bill: massive, deep blood-red with a pale yellow tip, far heavier than in any other parakeet in Europe. Second a maroon patch on the inner wing coverts, the shoulder patch, present in every plumage — female and juvenile included. The male also has a black chin and cheek stripe running into a pink band on the hindneck; females and young birds lack that pattern. The flight silhouette is a Rose-ringed Parakeet writ large: straight and fast, but on slower, heavier beats, with a broader rear body, and the long tail ends in yellow points.

Confusion species

The Rose-ringed Parakeet is the one that matters, because the two fly together in Amsterdam, Cologne and Brussels and share the same roosts. It is a third smaller and far slimmer, has a finer bill with only the upper mandible red, and lacks the shoulder patch entirely; its call is shrill and high, that of the Alexandrine deeper and harsher, and its wingbeat quicker and shallower. The male Rose-ringed carries a thin black collar edged with pink, the male Alexandrine a broader and far more conspicuous version of the same. When in doubt, look at the bend of the wing. The Monk Parakeet resembles neither — stocky and short-tailed, with a grey forehead, grey throat and grey-scalloped breast and a horn-coloured bill, and it builds a bulky stick nest instead of nesting in a cavity.

Habitat

Old city parks, park-like cemeteries, estate woodland and mature suburbs — anywhere with very thick, old trees. Breeds from mid-March to late April in roomy tree cavities, usually old woodpecker holes or rot holes gnawed wider, sometimes excavated by the bird itself in soft wood; the clutch is two to four eggs. Feeds on seeds, buds, blossom, young shoots and fruit, and in winter at garden feeders as well. Roosts in tens to hundreds in a fixed stand of trees, often in the company of Rose-ringed Parakeets.

Range and movements

The natural range lies in South Asia and Indochina: from eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan through India, Nepal and Sri Lanka to Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, with a separate form on the Andamans. All of that lies east of the area covered by this guide's maps. In Europe the population goes back to escaped cage birds. The Netherlands is now the stronghold: the first breeding record was in 2006, and about 985 birds were counted in January 2025, almost all of them in Amsterdam and Haarlem, with the large communal roost in the Oosterpark; since 2024 groups have wandered out to Utrecht, North Holland and even Texel. The species also breeds in Cologne (93 pairs in 2018), Wiesbaden, Bonn and Frankfurt, in Brussels, in a few English towns, and in good numbers in the parks of Istanbul.

• Resident
• Winter
• Passage
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

Go to the Oosterpark in Amsterdam at sunset in winter and wait for the parakeets to come in. Within the cloud of Rose-ringed Parakeets there is a minority that looks different: bigger, on slower beats, with a heavier rear end and a longer tail. When a group lands in a crown, find the red patch at the bend of the wing with binoculars — it is there on females and young birds too, and it settles the identification at once. The deep, resonant call works just as well: you hear it straight through the rest. In the breeding season it pays to watch old elms and planes with a roomy cavity.

Conservation status

Assessed as Near Threatened and decreasing. The cause is trapping for the cage-bird trade — at least 57,772 birds entered international trade between 1981 and 2014 — together with the loss of old forest; the steepest declines are recorded in Sindh and Punjab in Pakistan and in parts of Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. The European picture runs the other way: here it is an introduction founded on escaped cage birds, and since about 2013 it has been accelerating, doubling every few years. The species is not on the EU list of invasive alien species of Union concern. The Dutch risk assessment points to possible competition for roomy tree cavities with native hole-nesters and notes that targeted control is awkward, because the birds sit among far more numerous Rose-ringed Parakeets. Hard evidence of displacement is still lacking; the numbers are small enough to follow closely, and large enough to make that worth doing.