Julie Kleinsmith, age 9, of Eugene, Ore., for her question:
Where do wild parakeets build their nests?
When the early settlers came to America they found flocks of wild parakeets flying among the trees. There are still wild parakeets in Mexico and South America, and dozens of different kinds live in other parts of the world. But our wild parakeets are lost forever.
Our pretty pet parakeets are like colorful jewels. Our only wild parakeet was also a beauty. Most of his feathery coat was bright grassy green. His cheeks and forehead were reddish orange, and on his head he wore a ye11ow cap. From the tip of his hard, hooked beak to the tip of his slim pointed tail he sometimes measured a foot. This friendly bird was the Carolina parakeet. He enjoyed a happy family life with flocks of his relatives in most of our eastern states.
Parakeets are members of the gaily dressed parrot family. Flocks of them live in India and Africa, Asia and Australia, Mexico and South America, the Philippines and almost every other warm, woodsy part of the world. It would take a long time to count the different kinds, and each type you find seems prettier than all the rest.
All birds of the parrot family are friendly fe110ws. In the wild state they live together in flocks. Chatty groups perch on the branches. Fast flying squadrons swoop off together to find fruit and nuts, grain and seeds. But when nesting time comes, the married couples go off together. In the wild the parrots and parakeets do not, as a rule build nests of grassy materials. Most of them dig their nests.
A mother and father parakeet make a loving couple, and as a rule they stay married to each other for life. The parents choose a little cave type nest for their children:
It may be a crevice in a tree or hollow in the ground. They may dig their small nesting chamber in a trunk or a branch or a rotting tree stump. They may take over the old nest of a squirrel or woodpecker. Some wild parakeets nest under the tree roots or dig burrows, and some barrow the burrows of termites. The nest of one Australian parakeet is just a hollow on the bare ground. But the gray breasted parakeet of South America breaks all the family rules and builds a nest of sticks high up in a tall tree.
Parakeet eggs are white and roundish. There may be five to 10 of them, and the loving parents may raise two broods a year. Papa takes his turn at sitting on the eggs until they hatch. The tiny chicks are blind and bare and even more he1pless than most young birds. The parents gather the food for the growing youngsters and partly digest it in their crops. Then they spit it up into the wide open mouths of their hungry children.