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A Parakeet Collaboration!
When Sean approached me in 2024 saying he'd like to build a parakeet box and would I help, I was excited to see what we could create.
Sean came down to Wales for a few days and together we created a box set-up that we thought they would like. To protect the camera and lighting, we created a perspex roof cover that is at the top of the box. Inside this, in a cavity, the camera, lighting and cabling is concealed, well away from prying beaks!
I set the camera up ready for Sean to plug in when he got home and helped him set up the software to monitor the box. We were too late for the 2024 season, but in 2025, they checked it out, but didn't breed. In 2026, they started showing a lot of interest in the box and we are now delighted to be live streaming the box as they have decided it is the place to raise their family!
The Ealing Wildlife Group voted to call them Shrek & Fiona and I am excited to follow their story this season, especially as it is a species that I am not very familiar with. In fact, we are trying to find out if anyone has live streamed the whole story of parakeets raising a family, before.
You can watch the camera via my Live Cameras section of my website.
Breeding starts from January to June. They nest in holes in trees in gardens and parklands or high-up cavities such as a crevice in a wall. They line their nests with bark and wood chip pulled off from the inside of the chamber. We have watched the female dismantle the branches we had screwed in place and then shred these to increase the substrate we had placed in there. They would do this to the inside of a tree cavity.
The female will lay three to four eggs, which are incubated by the female alone for twenty-two to twenty-four days. The females are sometimes helped by the males to raise the chicks which fledge after forty to forty-five days after hatching.
Shrek is distinguished by his turquoise nape and thin red neckline.
