06/30/2026
African parrots have been living wild in Phoenix, Arizona, since the 1980s. They nest inside giant saguaro cacti, eat cactus fruit and mesquite pods, and when the summer heat passes 110 degrees they perch in groups on air conditioner vents on the sides of buildings. There are over 2,000 of them. Phoenix is believed to be home to the largest colony of rosy-faced lovebirds outside of their native Africa.
The rosy-faced lovebird is a small parrot, about six inches long, bright green with a vivid pink face that fades into a rose wash across the chest and a flash of blue on the rump. It is native to the Namib Desert and surrounding dry woodlands of Namibia, Angola, and the northwest corner of South Africa. It is one of the most popular cage birds in the world. More than 500,000 were exported from Africa between 1992 and 2001, nearly all of them captive-bred. Inevitably, birds escaped or were released by owners who underestimated how loud a parrot is at six in the morning. By the mid-1980s, feral flocks were breeding in residential neighborhoods across the Phoenix metro area.
Nobody recorded the founding event. There is no circus truck, no storm, no single moment. Robert Carter of the Maricopa Bird Alliance says the colony likely grew from multiple small escapes and releases over years. The birds found a city built in a desert that looked enough like home to stay. Phoenix is hot, dry, and full of the two things a rosy-faced lovebird needs: water and seed. Backyard bird feeders, drip irrigation, swimming pools, and ornamental landscaping provided all of it.
The nesting is the part that makes no sense until you understand the bird's origin. Gila woodpeckers carve cavities into the trunks of saguaro cacti. The cactus responds by forming a hardened lining around the hole, a structure called a boot, which seals the wound and prevents water loss. When the woodpecker moves on, the cavity remains, insulated, shaded, and ten to fifteen degrees cooler than the air outside. The lovebirds moved in. A bird from the Namib Desert, nesting inside a Sonoran Desert cactus, in a hole carved by a North American woodpecker. Three species from three continents, linked by a cavity in a plant.
They also nest under the dead hanging fronds of untrimmed palm trees, especially Canary Island date palms, which give them shelter and elevation. The Arizona Breeding Bird Atlas found them most abundant in older established neighborhoods with tall shade trees, mature palms, and the kind of dense backyard vegetation that a newer subdivision does not have.
The females carry nesting material in a way no other parrot does. They tear raw plant matter into long strips, tuck the strips into their rump and tail feathers, and fly back to the nest with the material woven into their plumage. They look like small green birds trailing streamers.
They mate for life. Pairs sit side by side on a branch and turn their faces toward each other to sleep. If one dies, the other may refuse to eat for days. They are loud, social, and visible from a block away, flying in tight chattering flocks of ten to thirty between feeding sites.
They eat cactus fruit, mesquite pods, palo verde seeds, palm fruit, apples from backyard trees, and whatever homeowners put in their bird feeders. They bathe constantly. They have been documented in Phoenix since at least 1986, have survived every summer and every winter since, and show no sign of declining. An Associated Press story in February 2026 called them one of Phoenix's most recognizable urban wildlife species.
A Namibian desert parrot, loose in the Arizona desert, nesting in a cactus, cooling off on an air conditioner. It has been there for forty years and most people in Phoenix have no idea it is not supposed to be.
Source: Audubon / Arizona Field Ornithologists / Cornell Lab of Ornithology / Associated Press / Arizona Breeding Bird Atlas.
