(Photo: Shiho Fukada/AP)

FERAL PARROT
Species: Accidentally imported from Argentina
City habitat: Brooklyn, Manhattan
Monk parrots, bright-green birds a little smaller than pigeons, live in sofa-size colonies on spires, stadium lights, and utility poles. You can see them flying around the high nests at Brooklyn College and Green-Wood Cemetery—throw some birdseed around, and a group will land on the sidewalk. The parrots have also recently established a foothold in Manhattan near 104th Street and Amsterdam, under an air conditioner. Urban legend has it that the parrots, which aren’t native to New York (they appeared here in the late sixties), escaped from JFK airport when mobsters, skimming from a shipment, opened their crate. Their natural habitat is the Argentine mountains, so they don’t mind the cold.

(Photo: Dorling Kindersley/Getty Images)

WILD TURKEY
Species: Native; first spotted in Staten Island a decade ago
City habitat: All boroughs
A wild turkey named Zelda has appeared in Battery Park regularly since 2003, according to Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. They also turn up on the Staten Island Greenbelt and in Pelham Bay Park. The Staten Island neighborhoods of Ocean Breeze and Dongan Hills complain of being overrun with wild turkeys, who gang up on dogs and cats and scare children. Residents have offered to relocate the birds upstate (the state said no), and some birds have died suspicious deaths. The Staten Island Parks Commissioner estimates the borough’s wild-turkey flock to be about 100, and staffers have seen a mother with thirteen babies, known as poults.

(Photo: Getty Images)

PIPING PLOVER
Species: Native
City habitat: Queens
Known as the bird that hijacks Fire Island and Hamptons beaches, plovers are endangered, jittery, small shorebirds. They’re sandy-brown on top, white on bottom, with orange legs. The piping plovers nest at Rockaway Beach between Beach 44th Street and Beach 57th Street until August. Rangers sometimes lead tours (carefully).

With Scales

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(Photo: Robert Holmgren/Getty Images)

SALAMANDER
Species: Native
City habitat: Queens
Delicately overturn a large, flat rock in one of New York’s big, swampy, outer-borough parks, and you may get to see one of several species of salamanders. The redback salamander, found at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, looks like a short, rust-colored snake. The much prettier (and rarer) spotted salamander lives in Alley Pond.

Related:

• Archive: “Features”
• Articles by Carol Vinzant
• Table of Contents: Jul 2, 2007 issue of New York | Subscribe!