Are Quaker Parrots Legal? The Bird Banned for Nest Building

Are Quaker Parrots Legal? The Bird Banned for Nest Building

Thirteen states will not let you own a quaker parrot. That is more outright bans than any other bird on this site, more than the cockatoo, more than the African grey, and it has nothing to do with the bird being dangerous, endangered or difficult.

It is about architecture.

The Only Parrot That Builds

Every other parrot in the pet trade nests in a hole. The quaker, Myiopsitta monachus, weaves. It is the only parrot species that builds a free-standing stick nest, and it builds communally: single nests with several chambers, compound structures many meters across, and in the species' native Argentina, single nests with up to twenty chambers.

In South America and in the United States alike, the birds pick electrical infrastructure to build on. Nest material bridges energized components, the current arcs, and the substation goes down.

The best documented case is south Florida. A 2002 paper in the Proceedings of the Vertebrate Pest Conference, by Michael Avery of the USDA National Wildlife Research Center with co-authors from the University of Florida, Florida Power and Light, Pandion Systems and the University of Chicago, put numbers on it. In the first five months of 2001, FPL logged 498 outages attributed to monk parakeets, affecting more than 21,000 customers, which projects to 1,027 outages a year, or 2.81 every day. Estimated costs for that year came to $585,000, about $570 per outage, with nest removal alone running $415 a nest. A survey of the whole FPL system found 1,110 nests.

The same paper explains how the birds got there: between 1968 and 1972, 64,225 monk parakeets were imported into the United States for the pet trade. Some escaped, some were released, and the species established itself through the 1960s and 1970s in Florida, Illinois, New York, Rhode Island and Texas.

So the sequence runs: the pet trade brought the bird in by the tens of thousands, the bird got out, and the states that reacted wrote rules aimed at stopping the next colony. The pet you would buy today is caught by a rule written about power lines.

Where Quaker Parrots Actually Stand

Three Different Ways to Ban One Bird

The drafting is more varied here than for any other species we have mapped, and the three sharpest examples are worth reading side by side.

Nebraska bans it by writing it out of a definition. The importation rule ends with the entry "All Cage and Aviary Birds." The chapter then defines that term as "those captive-reared birds, not native to Nebraska, such as parrots, exotic finches, and canaries, which are adapted to live and breed in a cage," and adds one sentence: "For purposes of this regulation, the monk parakeet (Myiopsitta monachus) is not a cage and aviary bird." No prohibited list, no permit denial. The bird is simply defined out of the category that would have let it in. This is the only instance of that technique on the whole map.

Connecticut bans it as the only parrot in the regulation. Its wild animal rule has four categories, and Myiopsitta monachus is named by species in Category Two. Every other psittacine in the world falls outside all four categories and is completely unrestricted in Connecticut. One species, sitting alone, in the middle of an otherwise untouched order.

Kansas bans it on a list of fish. K.A.R. 115-18-10 prohibits importation, possession or release of 27 species, and the company the quaker keeps tells you exactly what the rule is for: walking catfish, silver carp, bighead carp, black carp, snakehead, round goby, white perch, zebra mussel, quagga mussel, New Zealand mudsnail, marbled crayfish, rusty crayfish. The monk parakeet is number 13, between the marbled crayfish and the Asian raccoon dog. Nobody put it there because it might bite someone.

Virginia's Band Test

Virginia is the most practical rule in the set, and the one other states could copy.

The species is in Virginia's permit table like any other regulated exotic. Then subsection (C) adds:

Exception for certain monk parakeets. No permit is required for monk parakeets (quakers) that have been captive bred and are closed-banded with a seamless band.

A seamless closed band is a solid ring with no join. It can only be slipped onto a chick's foot in the first days of life, before the toes grow. It cannot be fitted to an adult, and it cannot be removed without cutting it. So the band is physical proof the bird was hatched in captivity, which is precisely the fact the rule cares about: a captive-bred pet is not the bird that starts a colony.

That is the whole test. A quaker with a seamless band is an ordinary pet in Virginia. A quaker with an open band, which could have been fitted to a wild-caught adult, needs a permit. Keep the breeder paperwork with the bird.

The Grandfather Clauses Are Narrow

Three of the ban states left a door open for existing owners, and all three are tighter than they first look.

Georgia's runs only to a person who held a current wild animal license on the effective date of the rule, on that license's conditions. Not to any prior owner, only to licensees.

Kansas dates its grandfather to February 1, 1978, and requires an application to the secretary describing how the bird came into the applicant's possession. Nearly half a century on, that is a historical clause.

Virginia's asterisked-animal provision required a written declaration to the department by January 1, 1993, works as a possession-only permit, renews every five years and cannot be transferred.

If you already own a quaker and you are moving to a ban state, none of these will help you. Check before the truck is loaded.

What This Adds Up To

A quaker parrot is unrestricted in 34 of the 52 jurisdictions we have read, which includes most of the country by population. In thirteen it is banned outright, in three it needs a permit, in Virginia it needs a band, and in Tennessee we could not resolve it.

The useful thing to take from this species is what the bans are for. Nothing here is a dangerous animal rule. Every one of these prohibitions is an invasive species rule that happened to land on a popular pet, which is why the quaker sits on lists next to carp and mussels rather than next to big cats. If you want the same pattern in a mammal, the prairie dog legal guide covers an animal banned for disease history rather than danger, and the cockatoo legal guide covers the parrot restricted for the opposite reason, international trade protection.

For everything else about keeping one, see our quaker parakeet care guide, the quaker parakeet handling guide for the temperament this bird is known for, and the exotic pet legal hub for how these rules are structured.

To see this at a glance, our interactive map of quaker parakeet laws shades every state and clicking one gives you the rule it comes from.

Sources & Further Reading