Why Are There No Aspirins In Romford?**

  - and a second riddle, what connects these four pictures?

The wonderful Hepburn/Bogart film, Jimi Hendrix, the Great Storm, and a Surrey Petshop?

Do you know? can you guess? It's this vibrant green bird, 

The rose-ringed parakeet [aka psittacula krameri, ring-necked parrot or Kramer parrot]  This beautiful bright green bird is a wild-living, non-native parrot, found in the UK - mostly in London, and the South East. There are estimated to be about 12,000 breeding pairs! 

Nobody is quite sure how so many of these birds, with different subspecies native to Africa and India came to be flying around our Metropolis [The Esher Rugby Club has named its women's team The Parakeets in tribute to the profusion of birds around their training ground]

The four most popular theories [none of which has been fully endorsed by ornithologists] are these

[1] Some birds imported to Ealing Studios for the 1951 film escaped 

[2] Jimi Hendrix, who lived in London in the late 60's released some in Carnaby Street

[3] A number accidentally escaped from a Surrey Pet Shop in 1970

[4] Some aviaries were damaged in the Great Storm of 87, and scared birds flew away
In truth nobody knows when or how this influx started!  But we do know they were first spotted way back in 1855 [here in Norfolk, of all places!]

In the last 25 years, more people have had cameras on their phones, and so pictures, and therefore awareness has increased.

There are some living in Rosie's Street in London - and I was surprised to see them out of the bedroom window on Saturday morning [we had stayed overnight with Julian in Romford]

There were three being quite noisy round the neighbour's bird feeders, but as I got my phone out, one flew away. There is concern about their impact on the environment, but some of our native birds [sparrowhawks, peregrine falcoms and hobbies] have been observed preying on them [and predator numbers in London have increased] But their presence has been likened to that of the grey squirrel- increasing and maybe destroying native species.
But they did brighten up my Saturday morning.

**There are no Aspirins in Romford because the Paracetamol/Parrots Eat Em All. 

Sorry! This old joke only works in the UK. as my US friends call the second drug Acetaminophen,