Over the past year, an Argentinian rock radio station has twice had its antenna wrecked. Short circuits have fried gear left and right, and relentless power outages — sometimes hitting twice a day — have plunged TAXI FM into sudden silence.
The culprits? A flock of burrowing parrots that overran two neighbouring, rural towns in Argentina’s Buenos Aires province as the birds’ habitat shrank over the years, while human settlements grew. And residents, now outnumbered by parrots, are fed up.
Each day as the sun begins to set over Pedro Luro and Hilario Ascasubi, thousands of the vibrant green-, yellow- and red-feathered parrots swoop into town. Their screeching echoes long into the night, while their droppings blanket streets and parks. But the real disaster, according to TAXI FM Director Ramón Álvarez, is where these birds choose to roost: on the towns’ power lines.
‘THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF BIRDS’
“It’s thousands and thousands of birds, and they’re not only biting through the cables, but their massive weight is also bending the power lines,” said Álvarez, who lives in Pedro Luro. “At dawn, when they start flying out, the stretched-out cables bounce into each other, and that’s how we have short circuits and power outages in the whole town.”
It’s not just Álvarez’s radio station that has faced unexpected bills for repairs and equipment replacements. Fried equipment, damaged power lines, constant outages and repairs have cost the electric companies in Pedro Luro and Hilario Ascasubi more than 75 million pesos, or about $77,000, according to company documents. Hilario Ascasubi’s electric cooperative has been forced to sell land to cover the mounting expenses, said María del Valle Otero, a town council member.
The parrots’ pesky antics also have interrupted workdays and schooling, ravaged fields, caused events to be canceled and raised growing concerns about diseases – especially after “a dearly beloved” neighbor died in 2022 from psittacosis, a bacterial infection transmitted by birds, Otero said. (It’s also known as “parrot fever.”)
Residents staged a protest over the parrots earlier this year, and the council has filed complaints at the provincial and national levels, but there’s no clear end in sight. The bird species known as “burrowing parrot” is protected under Argentinian law.
“This is an unsustainable situation that needs an immediate solution,” Otero said. “We just can’t continue living like this.”
At 41, Otero still remembers when the burrowing parrots were more a marvel than a menace. Growing up in rural outskirts of Hilario Ascasubi, she would spot small groups of the colorful birds during her walks to school. But in the past 30 years, Otero said, a few scattered sightings have turned into a “full-scale invasion” – especially between December and April, Argentina’s summer months.
“When you have 10 birds it’s cute,” she said. “But, when you have thousands, it turns into any person’s worst nightmare.”
Burrowing parrots, a species native to Argentina and Chile, derive their name from their unique nesting habits. In Argentina’s north Patagonia region, they dig elaborate tunnels into the towering, sandy cliffs that loom over the Atlantic, while the surrounding grassy shrub lands provide the birds with the fruits and seeds they need to survive.
But over the past decade, these parrots have ventured beyond their usual homes, inching closer to towns like Hilario Ascasubi and Pedro Luro – which are located some 124 miles north of the world’s largest parrot colony, El Cóndor. This shift, according to agronomist engineer Paolo Sánchez, is driven by the twin pressures of urban sprawl and habitat loss.
“On one hand, the cities began to grow and developing agriculture,” said Sánchez, who has researched the burrowing parrot population. “Then, on the other, there was a lot of deforestation, and the parrots lost their habitat, shelter and food sources.”
The birds found refuge in the grain and onion fields surrounding the towns, where they now enjoy an “endless buffet,” he said. With abundant fresh water and no natural predators, Hilario Ascasubi and Pedro Luro have turned into accidental parrot paradises.
‘THEY’RE EVERYWHERE’
“It was gradual at first, but then it hit us all at once,” said Otero. “Now they’re everywhere — on the main roads, in the parks. You can’t even talk on the phone or open your windows because all you’ll hear is their nonstop squawking.”
The towns haven’t been able to do an exact count of the birds. But a report from researchers at Universidad Nacional del Sur of Bahía Blanca pointed to a population topping 70,000. Based on that, officials have estimated there could be as many as 10 parrots per resident.
In Hilario Ascasubi the blanket of bird poop coating the children’s park prompted the town to chop down its trees. In March, the finale concert for the local onion festival was canceled last-minute after the birds caused a massive power outage. This year, another young resident contracted psittacosis and is in a “very delicate state,” according to Otero.
Since at least 2019, the town has tried every imaginable method to chase the birds away, Otero said. During the pandemic, officials went high-tech, purchasing a machine that – propped atop a building — scanned for parrots and blasted them with a green laser “that looks straight out of an apocalyptic movie,” she added. “It worked — for about a month. Then they came back, like nothing had happened.”
Next up: a laser gun mounted on a moving truck, followed by a “hefty investment” in machines that boomed with loud noises, she said. Both efforts were futile.
These days, some residents have taken matters into their own hands. They bang on power lines where the parrots perch or wave sheets to scare them off. Otero bought a tiny laser flashlight to shoo them away from her home, but she’s had to keep changing where she aims it.
“They’re incredibly smart birds,” she said. “Once they figure out it’s harmless, they just start ignoring it altogether.”
There’s not much else the towns can do. A 2017 law extended protections for the burrowing parrot — preventing town officials from killing the birds or implementing more humane measures, such as oral contraceptive bait, without authorization from the national government.
“We’ve elevated this issue so many times throughout the years,” Otero said. “We’ve begged and pleaded for them to do a study on the birds or to send an expert to come up with a solution. The only response we’ve gotten so far is: Shift to underground power lines.”
That’s something that Hilario Ascabusi’s roughly 8,000 residents — and its small, electric cooperative — can’t afford, Otero said.
It also doesn’t help that Argentina’s Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development was dissolved in December – just one day after the country’s right-wing leader, President Javier Milei, took office.
“We’re truly at a loss on what to do,” Otero said. “And it’s not that we want to go crazy and kill all the parrots, but we need to have quality of life too.”