Parrots flying high on drugs are annoying farmers by plundering poppy fields to feed their opium addiction

Drug-addled birds sit perched in wait before swooping down behind workers' backs for a nibble before retreating to high branches - where some then fall to their death passed out

Parrots flying high on drugs are annoying farmers by plundering their poppy fields to feed their opium addiction.

The drug-addicted birds sit perched in wait until the morphine-rich area is exposed by workers slitting open the flowers' pods to help them ripen.

The parrots then swoop down in silence into the opium fields - having learned not to squawk - and frantically nibble off the stalks below the pod before they are spotted.

Video shows them retreating to high branches where they gorge on the plants leaving them sleeping for hours - and even falling to their death.

This phenomenon was first reported in 2015, but this year it has spread across to other regions for the first time.

Farmers now claim they are getting warnings from the Government's narcotics department - which controls opium farming - over their reduced yields.

Sobharam Rathod, an opium farmer from Neemach, India, estimates parrots are stealing around ten per cent of his crop and he has been given a warning.

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