Bogey's Green Legacy
I watched as the beautiful Green birds rose as one body from the end of the garden. Given that the fox conversation was still hanging over the breakfast table, I wasn’t about to start another fauna discussion. I excused myself and headed back upstairs. Once in the back bedroom I grabbed my camera phone and looked out into the garden for the second time that morning. Sure enough, in one of the trees that flank the garden were four green parrots. I snapped a bad picture (above) just to prove to myself that I wasn’t insane. Later, when everyone had gone out, I tried a little ‘twitching’ on the web. If parrots have established themselves in Surrey then surely it must be all over the news? Not exactly. I did, however, discover that the birds I had seen were Ring Neck Parakeets and one of the more colorful theories for how they come to be in the UK. Namely the assertion that the birds escaped from the film set of The African Queen while it was being filmed at Shepperton Studios in West Lond...