Recent claims that Defra are considering culling parakeets as they arrive in new areas of the UK has caused a stir on social media. UK residents have been quick to defend the country's only naturalised parrot, rumoured to have initially been established in the wild in south west London. Their numbers have steadily increased since the 1970s with 8,600 pairs now breeding annually in the UK according to the RSPB. How they found themselves in the wild is continually debated, with claims that they escaped from Ealing studios on the set of 'The African Queen' in 1951, whilst another popular theory that a pair were ‘set free’ by Jimi Hendrix on Carnaby Street in the 1960s.