Decided to visit one of the best local spots for a shot at photographing green parakeets. There is a spot, that these birds have been roosting at for years. Every night, huge flocks of birds gather to roost in the trees of a popular shopping center, in a very busy part of town, near where I live. It is mostly great-tailed grackles, sparrows, doves, some other species of black birds, and  of course, the main reason for my visit, green parakeets. For our local bird lovers, this spot truly is a must visit. Looking back, it has been about four years since I had last been here, I was just super busy traveling. But I have time now, and it is so great that the birds still use this spot to sleep, which means, they feel safe here.

I arrived around dusk with the sun dipping low in the sky to try and capture some images of the parakeets with what was left of the blue sky. I was hoping for a setting sun in the background shot, but that proved more difficult here. When I arrived, I went straight for a tree I know they visit a lot. It is a big old tree, right in the middle of the parking lot. I parked next to it and stepping out of the vehicle, and right away,  I could hear the squawks. Green parakeets are noisy birds. In the tree, were two groups of about 10 birds in each family. They were wrestling and arguing, biting and yelling at their neighbors, hoping around, just being birds. 

As soon as I walked under the tree, their attention turned towards me, watching me closely, and I instantly noticed, the chattering got louder. The birds kept eye-balling me, which was great for fun photo ops. My favorite part about photographing birds here is they are used to seeing people, so they do not fly off right away when people approach. They don’t let you get that close to them, but if you have a 400mm lens or better, you will get some decent images.

I snapped a few shots and then took off to another spot across the street in another parking lot where they gather before it gets dark. At this spot, the birds are high up, sitting up on the power lines, fighting, squawking, socializing. I enjoy watching them. It started out with about 15 birds, then as the sun dropped some more, like clockwork, more birds arrived, then more birds, until over 100 parakeets were above me, on the power lines. It is always fun to watch. I spent more time watching them, vs taking pictures,  because I am not a fan of birds on structures, I prefer natural looking environments.  So I watched them for a good 10 minutes, then all of a sudden all the birds took off, squawking loudly, and I knew why…

High up in the sky, a raptor flew by, obviously trying to catch one last meal before it got dark.  All the parakeets in the area were in the air, flying erratically in many large groups, trying to confuse and annoy the raptor into leaving. After a minute or two, the raptor grew tired of the parakeets and flew off. The parakeets returned to the trees and high wires, still chattering away.  I am sure they were all gossiping about how they came close to dying, but despite the fear, they drummed up the courage and bravely chased away this big dangerous bird. lol

My personal goal for this photo session was to snap some close up images of the birds, once it got dark. The birds tend to roost in short trees, that are close to the buildings. So it is easy to get some decent shots of them if you have a strobe, which of course I brought. I have not done any night shooting since our Borneo trip, earlier this year, when we could all still travel, so I was pretty pumped to break the strobe out again. I miss night safaris. 

Once it got dark I walked around the parking lot, looking for my photo subjects, which are pretty tough to find… green parakeets, hiding in green leafed trees. Yup, hard to find. As I walked around, the noise was deafening, all around me was the sounds of thousands of birds bedding down for the night. It is such an awesome sound. Damn I missed this. Felt so good to be out there and shooting. Even though I was in the city, it felt so good to be around wildlife again. The one thing that has come from this craziness is, I will never, ever take for granted any moments I get with nature, big or small. It is easy to forget how special and fragile, this all really is.

So back to my photo hunting… I found a few birds and began shooting. Because I was shooting flash, I would only snap a few images of the resting birds at a time, and then would leave them alone, and go off to find other birds. I didn’t want to annoy them too much, or force them to fly off. I purposely looked for birds resting in trees, that were underneath the street lights. So it wasn’t pitch black, and the light helped me find them, without needing a torch, plus it meant that they were not too disturbed by my flashes. I stayed shooting for about an hour, watching and listening, and sometimes snapping images. I would get the occasional odd stares from people driving by, trying to see what it was I was photographing. I just ignored them. 

Even though this area is in a busy parking lot, I still love it. The sound of thousands of birds roosting in those trees, squawking away is poetry to my ears, and the stuff I love more than anything. I truly feel lucky that this spot is near where I live, and that I was able to spend some time with these lovely, goofy birds. And, I am happy that after ALL these years, the birds are still there and hopefully… will be there for years to come. 

Thank you for reading!