How tropical birds took over this European capital seattletimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from seattletimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
BRUSSELS — In the lively Brussels neighborhood of Flagey, you can be sure of two things: People will be lined up for fries at Frit Flagey, and pigeons will be nearby, pecking at scraps. Just a few hundred yards away, around dusk, a scene unfolds that feels distinctly less Belgian. Hundreds of electric-green parakeets, more commonly associated with the tropics of West Africa or India than gray, rainy Brussels, flock to a tree beside a pond. They slumber there for the night, turning the tree into
After a small group of parakeets were released from a zoo in Brussels in the 1970s, their numbers soared. A population increase has also occurred across the continent.
Over the last 30 years, European breeding birds have shifted their range by, on average, 2.4 km (1.5 miles) per year, according to a recent study. This shift, however, didn't align with the expectations based on changing climate and land cover during that period. Researchers anticipated that solely