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So- the final post from my time in Spain. Sitting here in Cambridge, my window wide open to try to deal with the oppressive heat, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine I’m back there. Therefore, please regard this post as a multi-sensory experience-  just read it before the heatwave ends.

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MADRID

We don’t often head into the city when I’m visiting home (I don’t really know why, because it really is a great place to visit), but this year there were two things that convinced me to leave the countryside and brave the city centre’s soaring temperatures – a fully gluten free restaurant that made a mean Tarta de Santiago (coeliac readers- Celicioso will blow your mind), and Madrid’s answer to London’s ring-necked parakeets- the quaker parrot. Like the parakeets, these guys were also originally escapees (they originally hail from South America), and have also done spectacularly well- figures by SEO BirdLife put their population in Madrid at around 5000 in 2016.

Curiosity had pushed the winged interlopers right up to the top of my wish list, and we finally caught up with some outside the Palacio Real. A small group of them was foraging among the feral pigeons, the lime green of their plumage contrasting strongly with the the latter’s greys and browns.

Seeing an invasive species like this is always a double-edged sword- the parrots were certainly very beautiful, and their quick flight and constant shouting doesn’t seem entirely out of place in such a busy city. They do cause damage, though- mainly through building their enormous communal nests which can weight up to 50kg. Not surprisingly, this isn’t very good for the city’s trees; but it does seem a bit rich of us to be deciding what should and should not thrive in this entirely human-made landscape. Zaragoza culled its quaker parrots after their population reached 1400 birds, and it seems likely that Madrid may soon follow in its footsteps. Time will tell what the future holds.