Chasing London's Cloud of Feral Parakeets

"My Secret City" is a collaboration between CityLab and Narratively, a digital publication featuring extraordinary stories of ordinary people, told through video, text, photo essays, comics journalism and more.

They started on the margins and colonized the centre. First they were seen in Kingston upon Thames, a leafy suburb on London’s southwestern fringe. Then they moved to neighboring Richmond and squatted the gardens of Hampton Court Palace—the former residence of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and Charles I—before migrating northward into London proper. Soon they were in Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, clamoring around Big Ben, massing in Parliament Square. Then they were in the grand Victorian cemetery at Highgate. Then they were up Primrose Hill. Then they were crowding East London’s canals. Then they were everywhere.