“Well, I wasn’t expecting to see this,” said Janet Shaw yesterday morning when she came across a ring-necked parakeet on her birdfeeder in the Blackwell area of Darlington. Flocks of parakeets have been well established in London for decades and have been moving north, but we weren’t aware that they had colonised the North-East until Janet, who is a member of The Northern Echo Camera Club, produced the photographic evidence. How common are they? Please let us know...