Lively chatter emanates daily from a cellular antenna tower in La Grange.
A flock of monk parakeets, a pigeon-sized South American species with bright green plumage, has established a communal nest in the tower at Shawmut and Hazel Avenues.
Believed to be descendents of a flock that escaped in the 1970s from a shipment of pet birds at O’Hare International Airport, the species long ago established nests in the Hyde Park area. In recent years they have begun nesting in other parts of the city and suburbs.
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They appeared in La Grange last winter, building a pair of large communal nests in the tower just off the northeast corner of Gordon Park and at the southeast corner of Plymouth Place, a retirement community at 315 N. La Grange Rd.
“They come down to our feeder, four of them at a time, and in the breeding season there are some young ones,” said Mary Thompson, a resident of the cottage section of Plymouth Place and a longtime bird watcher.
“They’re interesting to watch. They’re large and they’re different shades of green, and they perch on a crook on the feeder,” said Thompson, whose feeder also is visited by woodpeckers, finches, cardinals and cowbirds.
The parakeets have been greeting park employees as they arrive each day.
“It’s nice to come to work in the morning and see them chattering in the trees,” said Claudia Galla, park foremanfor the Park District of La Grange, whose office is on the west edge of Gordon Park.
The parakeets also may nest elsewhere in the La Grange area, she said. Galla recently stopped to chat with a friend at a nearby church and heard a familiar chattering in the trees above.
“My friend said, `Oh, that’s the parrots.’ He’s like, `Whatever,’ but I think it’s really neat,” Galla said.
It’s a matter of conjecture how the parakeets got from the airport to Hyde Park, said David Willard, bird-collection manager at the Field Museum and a resident of Hyde Park. “Maybe they flew southeast and stopped when they reached Lake Michigan,” he said.
There is some concern that eventually their fruit and seed-eating behavior could become a nuisance, if not a threat, to Midwestern agriculture, Willard said, but so far they’re a benign presence.
“They don’t migrate, or at least they haven’t,” he said. “But when a colony gets big enough, the young disperse and set up in other places.”
Willard said their communal nests are unique, resembling a beehive made of sticks about the size of a bushel basket with multiple entrances and compartments for the flock’s different nesting pairs. The communal living helps them survive Chicago winters, he said.
Two such nests are perched on the tower in La Grange, far off the ground. “They do well in the city because of the large number of hawthorn, cherry and other trees with fruit on them. And they’re heavily subsidized by back-yard bird feeders,” Willard said.
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Other flocks have been reported in Bensenville, Carol Stream, Berwyn and the Marquette Park area. David Horn, assistant professor of biology at Aurora University, said his students have seen monk parakeets in the Aurora area and on the Northwest Side of Chicago.
Threats to birds apparently are few but include utility crews, who have removed nests from electrical transmission poles in the Hyde Park area, and federal bureaucrats.
In 1988, the U.S. Department of Agriculture hatched a plan to rid the area of monk parakeets, fearing they would expand their range to agricultural areas and feed on commercial crops like they do in South America. The plan was stalled by the parakeets’ fans.
Other threats are less subject to political pressure. An American kestrel, a predatory bird about the size of a monk parakeet, was seen this week trying to poke its way into the La Grange nest. Horn, who identified the intruder from a photo, said it might have been hunting for prey the size of nestlings. The parakeets drove it away.
And last June, a tree containing several parakeet nests toppled unexpectedly on the South Side in Harold Washington Park, a spot named for the late mayor who lived nearby and who particularly enjoyed the birds. Chicago Animal Control workers quickly moved the nests, which contained about 50 young birds, to a nearby tree.
“They’re a non-native species that seems to have no negative impact on the environment,” Horn said. “They’re not competing with other birds for nesting sites, and they feed at winter bird feeders. They’re a really beautiful bird, and as long as they’re not doing any harm, I hope people will observe and enjoy them.”