There are some new noisy and quite colorful neighbors along the San Jose, Los Gatos and Campbell border–parrots.

The birds, more specifically mitred conures, have taken up residence in the trees of Cambrian Park and near Good Samaritan Hospital.

“My husband and son were leaving for work and they called me out front to see; I was so excited,” Cambrian resident Eva Pepitone said about her first sighting of the green parrots. “I ran inside and woke my grandson so he could see them. He is 12 and when he saw what I was waking him for, he was in awe. We all stood for many minutes just quietly watching them. They were perched on branches in a bare tree, and it made the tree seem so alive to watch them there. I could barely believe what I was looking at.”

A search of digital archives of this newspaper and its affiliates yields stories about parrot sightings in Campbell and Sunnyvale going back more than a decade, as well as other Bay Area sightings in the early 1990s. However, until the past month or so, there hasn’t been much squawk about a flock in the Cambrian Park corner of San Jose.

Mark Bittner, an author who spent six years documenting San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill flock, said he occasionally gets reports from people about seeing the birds in San Jose.

“There was the Sunnyvale flock, and I suspect they are the same ones,” he said. Reports of the Sunnyvale group suggest that as many as 200 birds called the city home at one time.

Toby Goldberg, Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society education and outreach director, agrees that the San Jose birds are likely an offshoot of the Sunnyvale group.

“Anytime you have a population that’s growing, they are going to have to break off,” Goldberg said. “They do that to avoid exploiting resources and so genetic diversity doesn’t get stifled.”

Worries about the hardiness of the birds, which are native to South America, can be set aside, she said.

Bittner adds that the term “tropical bird” refers more to the fact that the parrots do not migrate than to how hot and humid their ideal home is.

“Really, California is a very temperate area,” Goldberg said.

The parrots likely are pets that either escaped or were deliberately let loose.

“They are a common pet, and they get out,” Goldberg said. “I’m sure there were multiple instances of escapees.”

And though other birds such as crows may be put off by the presence of mitred conures in their territory, the brightly colored parrots are not considered a threat.

“They’re not directly competing with other species” for resources, Goldberg said.

The feral parrots rely on a network of suburban gardens and some native plants to get by.

“You have a matrix of people’s yards with persimmons, cherries, oranges…and then natives like elderberries and chokeberries,” Goldberg said, adding that she would expect the population of the birds to grow “as long as they have food.”

Look for a video of parrots in the treetops of Houge Park taken by resident Kathy Bauman at mercurynews.com/mytown.