Tropical birds living in Chicago
photo courtesy of Eloise Mason
Trudging along the snow-covered streets of Hyde Park, you hear chirping and screeching resembling the sound of Styrofoam pieces rubbing together. You look up and see a bright green and blue parakeet. You may think that all the cold and snow has finally made you go mad, but there really are tropical birds that have colonized on the South Side of Chicago. They are called monk parakeets.
These birds have been living in Hyde Park for more than 30 years. No one knows exactly how the wild parakeets arrived in Chicago, but it seems they are here to stay.
Mark Spreyer, a biologist who directs the Stillman Nature Center in South Barrington, has written about the monk parakeet and led tours for people interested in seeing the exotic birds. He told Parrot Chronicles the monk parakeets ”chose the right place to put up a colony. Everyone there really likes them. It’s a really diverse neighborhood and I think there’s a kind of multiculturalism connection between the people and the birds. They fascinate people,” he said.
Stephen Pruett-Jones, associate professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, will give a lecture on the exotic birds who have settled in Hyde Park. The impact of these non-native birds on other bird species, the environment and the community is the topic of Pruett-Jones’ lecture at noon on Feb. 20.
Roughly one foot long, the monk parakeet is a very social and gregarious bird. The plume of green feathers on the bird’s head and neck inspired its scientific name, myiopsitta monachus, because its hood of feathers resembles a monk’s hood, according to the Houston Audubon Society.
Pruett-Jones has been observing these birds for more than 15 years, and is generating a map of monk parakeet nests in Chicago and the surrounding areas including northwest Indiana and southern Wisconsin, with help from undergraduate students and local inhabitants’ sightings.
Experiments conducted in aviaries with captive birds have found the large nests provide a four-degree advantage over outside temperatures, so it is slightly warmer in the nests. However, “if that was the only thing they had going for them, they could not survive the winters. They only survive the winters because they have access to a large good-quality food source,” in birdfeeders, said Pruett-Jones.
“I think this winter will probably slow them up,” said Spreyer. The thick snow cover could make it harder to find food, and may “knock their numbers back a bit,” he said. Pruett-Jones estimates the number in Hyde Park at about 200.
The birds are of some concern for utility companies in Illinois. Monk parakeets occasionally build their nests on utility poles and power transformers, which can ignite fires and cause power outages.
The lecture will be in the Swift common room at the University of Chicago in Hyde Park. Admission is $5 at the door, and includes a vegetarian meal. Reserve a place before Tuesday at noon by contacting divinitylunch@gmail.com
Filed under Hot Topics, New Research | Comment (1)Biology of Stress
Cortisol is a hormone associated with they body’s response to stressful situations.
Researcher Dario Maestripieri at the University of Chicago is involved in research to determine how breastfeeding and having offspring affect the body’s stress response by measuring cortisol.
His research uses rhesus monkeys that are relatively genetically similar to humans and also demonstrate similar behavioral characteristics. Separating a free ranging monkey from its group is stressful for monkeys, so the researchers capturing free-ranging monkeys and took blood samples to measure hormone levels at different time periods and then analyzed the samples according to reproductive status - lactating, pregnant, neither pregnant nor lactating, while controlling for other variables such as age and rank.
The paper states “This analysis represents the first direct comparison of cortisol responses to stress in lactating and nonlactating females in nonhuman primates. We found no evidence of hyporesponsiveness to stress among lactating females. Rather, plasma cortisol levels were significantly higher in lactating than in nonlactating females, both shortly after capture and the morning after.” Also, “Concerns over risk to their infants may explain why lactating females exhibited higher cortisol responses to trapping and individual housing and why these responses did not vary significantly across the 6 lactation months.”
This research is really important and interesting because stress can affect health and parenting behavior, so understanding the biological response to and natural causes of stress and is essential.
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