Invasion of the Parakeets review – are we really waging class warfare with birds now?

In this passionate documentary, Chris Packham looks at the notorious nature invaders – and whether we should love or loathe those flashes of neon green in our skies ’Twas a grim February teatime in West Wickham, south London, when I saw my first parakeet. About six of them, in fact. I looked up from doing the dishes, through the window overlooking the garden, and there they were, where no medium-sized members of the genus Psittacula should be. Half a dozen slashes of the most vivid green imaginable against the brown bleakness of late winter in suburbia. Wholly improbable, wholly mesmerising, wholly wonderful. This was 25 years ago and I’ve been a fan ever since. They have become a far more common sight since then, of course, as the title of Chris Packham’s latest documentary, Invasion of the Parakeets, suggests. There are now an estimated 15,000 pairs in the UK – the largest population in Europe. Packham whips through the theories of how they arrived from their native Asia and Africa. Some were released after the filming at Isleworth of the 1951 Bogart-Hepburn vehicle The African Queen. A pair belonging to Jimi Hendrix’s girlfriend were set free in the late 60s as â