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In that rotten rain of 2012 (that stopped just in time
for the Olympics) flooding on the river was so bad
that the ceremony was cancelled between Sunbury
and Windsor for the first time in 900 years.
The last bird of the River Thames I’ll mention is a
controversial newcomer – the garish and noisy ring
necked parakeet. Some say that the first parakeets
escaped from the set of John Huston’s film African
Queen starring Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey
Bogart when it was being filmed at the Isleworth
Studios on the Thames in 1951. But no one knows for
sure and other suggestions include the guitarist Jimi
Hendrix releasing a pair of the birds in Carnaby Street
or escapees from the aviaries of the homesick last
King of Portugal (above) exiled to Fulwell Park near
Twickenham at the start of the 20
th
century.
In Surrey the Painshill Park Vineyard has suffered
losses when their vines have been stripped by the
birds and the roofs of two churches in North Cray
near Bexley have been damaged but so far there is no
evidence to suggest that the parakeets are affecting
our native birds. And if you wonder how come they
can survive our winters? Well it gets quite parky in
the foot hills of the Himalayas where they’re from!