Traverse the City and uncover 2,000 years of parakeets, urban ecology and the built environment.

What does it mean for a species, or a place, to belong? This thought-provoking walk uses the story of London’s parakeets to challenge familiar ideas of what is “natural”, “native” and out of place in our city.

Parakeets may not have originated in the British Isles, but Britain’s landscapes are far from untouched. Over thousands of years, people have shaped parks, gardens, forests and farmland, creating the habitats that wildlife occupies today. What we consider natural often depends on where we choose to begin the story.

Moving through the City, the walk will uncover different chapters in the relationship between people, parakeets and place. From Roman Britain and the oldest known British drawing of a parakeet near Lime Street, to the global forces of trade and empire represented by the Lloyd’s Building, the route will reveal how human activity has continually remade urban ecologies.

Along the way, explore the religious, moral and poetic lives of parakeets, including their associations with saints at St Paul’s and their contemporary reputation as an urban “pest”.

By the end, you will become a “paracologist”, part of an emerging discipline that moves beyond outdated ideas of nature and asks how people, wildlife and the built environment can coexist in a changing city.