How to tell if parakeets are "wild"? (1 Viewer)

Hi all,

So I found a rose-ringed parakeet in a park in Yerevan, Armenia today. It seemed to be acting naturally and was vary wary of people. If I'd seen the bird in, say, London or Istanbul I'd immediately have had it pegged as a feral bird and logged it on eBird. However, I've just found that feral RR Parakeet has never been reported in Armenia (on eBird at least), although it has been reported in neighbouring countries.
So, I assume the bird I saw was an escapee. So the question is; at what point do escaped RR Parakeets become "feral" and countable? Or is it possible that RR Parakeet managed to spread here from Baku (the closest city that regularly reports them)?

There isn't any way, you'll just have to log it and see what happens! National bird recording committees will base their judgements on things like population size and breeding success, which you can't measure from a single sighting on a trip.

note that something doesn't have to be "countable" to be entered in Ebird. In fact Ebird wants folks to enter not yet countable birds into the system, because researchers can use that data to track distribution and population increases in newly introduced taxa. I believe this data is what led to some recent exotic additions to the California bird checklist

I don’t know which park you saw it in, but this morning we were in one of the mini- parks that make up the ´Green Belt’ on the northeast side of the city centre( about a mile from Victory Park I estimate) when I heard a parakeet call. On investigation we found an aviary with at least 3 RR Parakeets in the collection. Although the netting etc. looked secure enough I suspect your bird is an escape, I hadn’t heard of any sightings in Armenia before.

Richard Prior said:

I suspect your bird is an escape, I hadn’t heard of any sightings in Armenia before.

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The nearest introduced populations are near Sirnak in SE Turkey and around the Gashd-Rodkan Protected area, NW Iran (BirdLife Datazone map), but there's possible evidence of a former population in the Caucasus from its depiction in Roman mosaics in Cyprus and Turkey, although perhaps it was a prized traded item back then.
MJB