Free Republic

At Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery the living get as much attention as the dead. Groundskeepers maintain the 478-acre historic landmark as an arboretum and habitat for more than 200 breeding and migratory bird species. But many visiting wildlife lovers aren't interested in those native birds. They're at the entryway, their binoculars trained on the spire atop its Gothic Revival arches. They've come to see the parrots. The urban cemetery hosts dozens of long-tailed, dove-size parrots, lime green with gray accents on their foreheads and chests, called Monk Parakeets. (Parrots and parakeets are part of the same family.) These birds maintain barrel-size...

Hundreds of monk parakeets, escapees from the pet trade, have settled beneath the city’s elevated highway. The non-native birds have become an unlikely fixture in the urban landscape of the Windy City, where large numbers of the striking green-and-gray parakeets live year-round. Chicago is on a main flyway for migratory birds, but monk parakeets have put down deep roots here. The South American members of the parrot family were brought north in the 1950s and 1960s and sold as pets, But they have long had fans in high places here. Former Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, who lived across the street...