For 40 years, the people of London have been happy to discover in their parks a bird that seems to have made its way from the Himalayas to the capital of England. With its shocking green body, red mouth, long tail and noisy screech(尖叫), the rose-ringed parakeet (长尾小鹦鹉) brought a vivid colour to parks in and around London.
However, the parakeets are no longer welcome. The government has suddenly woken up to the fact that there are many more parakeets in and around London making life harder for the local bird population. Government experts put the number of parakeets at around 30,000. They fear that if the number of parakeets keeps rising, these birds will push out local birds like wood-peckers, starlings and nuthatches from trees to build their own nests.
Not only that. According to an online report by The Independent, the parakeets will then also get control of most of the food available in the parks — seeds, berries, fruit and nuts. The local bird population will then have a hard time staying alive. An organization called the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has asked the government to investigate (调查) what kind of a threat the parakeet brings to local birds. If the government decides that these birds are indeed a threat to local birds, steps will be taken to control the number of parakeets.
The most surprising thing about the case of the rose-ringed parakeet is that no one quite knows how the parakeets came from India and started breeding (繁殖) in areas around London.
77. Parakeets are no longer welcome mainly because ______.
A. the local birds are being driven out
B. the government doesn’t like the birds
C. they are a threat to people’s health
D. people have a great fear of this kind of birds
78. According to an online report by The Independent, ______.
A. the parakeets’ future threat is impossible
B. the number of the parakeets is around 3,000
C. the parakeets should fly back to the Himalayas
D. the local birds won’t have enough food
79. People are not certain ______.
A. where the parakeets live
B. how the parakeets breed
C. how they flew to London
D. when they started living in London
80. The best title for this passage would be _____.
A. Help the parakeets B. Pretty birds have trouble
C. Birds invade London D. Pretty birds