Swinging Budgies

Cockatiel Taming - Best Tips

2010-09-20T20:34:00.000+10:00

Budgie World is closing

2010-07-16T20:48:00.000+10:00

Dear readers,

I regret to inform you that Budgie World is closing, our range of 'natural' products will not be available on-line.

I will give budgie enthusiasts their last chance to purchase before July 30th 2010. Also if any budgie enthusiast would like to continue this site, respond to this blog by July 23rd 2010.

Drop in endangered bird numbers sparks worries

2009-11-22T17:07:00.000+11:00

Concerns have been raised about a dramatic decrease in endangered bird numbers in Tasmania.

Experts say drought, wildfires and the spread of urban development have contributed to the decline in numbers of the 40-spotted pardelote and the swift parrot.

Conservationist, Sally Bryant, says pardelote, or 40-spot, numbers in the state have dropped significantly over the last decade.

"In areas like Dennes Hill on Bruny Island, where I can remember going down and being flooded by the sound of 40-spots, it's now very quiet, even though the bird is far more easily identifiable there than in some of the small colonies.

"My first reaction and certainly what the statistics are showing is that the numbers are very low," Ms Bryant said.

Conservationists want the Tasmanian Government to save the habitats of endangered bird species on Bruny Island.

Peter McGlone from the Conservation Trust says logging of the parrot's habitat should be stopped now, instead of waiting for the completion of industry codes of practice, which are being drafted.

"We know that an area on Bruny Island has been logged just in recent months that has swift parrot habitat in it," he said.

"There are other areas in the south of the state that may well be being logged right now, and [the Primary Industries Minister] David Llewellyn needs to be proactive and make sure those logging operaitons stop."

Forestry Tasmania has rejected claims it is rushing to log endangered species habitats before the new guidelines come into force.

The Forest Practices Authority has been working with major logging companies, including Forestry Tasmania, to draft guidelines to protect important wildlife habitats.

Forestry Tasmania's Hans Drielsma denies his company is rushing to cut down trees before the draft is approved.

"There's absolutely no basis to any suggestions like that," said Dr Drielsma.

He says harvesting has been stopped in areas where birds are breeding.

Budgies Flock to Outback Town

2009-10-30T12:52:00.000+11:00

Read about budgies in Boulia Queensland, how they flocked to the town.
Listen to the audio to get a wonderful description.
Watch the slide-show to witness the amazing flocks.

Watch for signs of obesity in pet bird

2009-10-11T18:04:00.000+11:00

Is your parrot fat? Life with little activity while in a cage with an all-you-can-eat buffet has many birds overweight and struggling with health problems.

Poor food choices - too many seeds, processed or otherwise fatty foods - also pack the pounds on.

Amazon parrots, large cockatoos, cockatiels and budgies seem more prone to obesity than other species of pet birds. Some of the signs of obesity in birds include:

* The presence of rolls of fat around the abdomen and hip areas, along with cleavage on the abdomen or breast area.

* Visible fat under the skin. The skin of most normal pet birds is typically very thin and quite transparent. When the skin is wet with rubbing alcohol, you should be able to see dark pink or red muscle underneath. In overweight birds, you see yellowish fat instead.

* Breathing difficulty, such as laboured breathing, especially after physical exertion.

* Heat intolerance, shown by excessive wing drooping or open-mouthed breathing in a hot environment.

* Overgrown upper beaks. Some birds will grow their upper beaks excessively long if they have obesity and fatty liver disease problems.

This is particularly true in Amazon parrots and budgies.

If you suspect your bird is fat - and especially if you already know your bird is fat - see your veterinarian right away for nutritional counselling and other ways to attack the problem.

Long-term obesity and a poor diet is a major cause of joint problems and heart disease in birds in middle age.

Amazon parrot finds its way home to Gastonia doctor after five-year absence

2009-09-30T21:21:00.002+10:00

If her wings carry her away from home again, Eunice may be able to tell helpful humans where she belongs.

“We need to teach them their address,” Jayne Stafford said, grinning as Dr. Barry Scanlan lifted the parrot from her perch. Birds that can mimic human speech could use their gift of gab to find their owners if they fly away, she said.

Scanlan, who returned Eunice to his Gastonia home last week after a five-year absence, agreed.

“You’re going to learn Daddy’s name,” he told Eunice, stroking the bird’s feathered back.

A double-yellow headed Amazon parrot, Eunice flew through an open back door and soared out of sight in 2004. Scanlan scoured the sky for his beloved pet, but Eunice was nowhere to be found.

“We drove all over the neighborhood,” Scanlan said. “It was ridiculous, we drove pretty much a mile-mile and a half in every direction looking for any sign of yellow or green in the trees.”

Amazon parrots aren’t native to North Carolina and are usually killed by predators if they wander into the wild. As months and years passed, Scanlan abandoned hope of finding Eunice.

“I thought she was dead,” he said. “I was just certain.”

Last week, Scanlan’s brother showed him an ad for a found Amazon parrot in The Gaston Gazette’s classifieds. On a lark, he called the number and described his missing bird.

Stafford had been fostering Eunice for several weeks and placed the classified ad to find the 7-year-old parrot’s missing owner. The man who had found the bird and kept it for nearly five years recently died, she explained.

“I knew this was a bird that somebody was looking for,” Stafford said. “I just wanted to make sure she got back in the right hands.”

A bird lover herself, Stafford lost her African grey parrot, Mick, in August 2005. She continues to search for Mick — whose vocabulary includes, “Oh, praise the Lord!”— in newspaper classifieds and on Web sites like www.911parrotalert.com.

“A lot of people who do find them don’t always know there’s a way to get them back home,” she said.

Breeders of exotic birds typically attach small bands to their legs inscribed with serial numbers. Scanlan provided Stafford with his breeder band number, and she matched it to the band on Eunice’s leg.

“It was the most bizarre thing,” Scanlan said. “The odds against it were astronomical. I asked if I could come over immediately.”

A family practice physician at Riverwood Medical Associates in Gastonia, Scanlan was reunited with Eunice on Tuesday night. The colorful bird is quickly readjusting to her old home.

“It really is a miracle that she’s here,” Scanlan said. “The odds are so against it. There was a divine hand involved there.”

Eunice still speaks the phrases she learned years ago, including “Hey, baby bird” and “Hello, how are you?” Scanlan said double-yellow headed Amazons are the second-best talkers among tropical bird species.

Stafford has an African grey parrot named Joel, and she still hopes to find Mick someday. He couldn’t survive in the wild for four years, but it’s possible that someone found him and is raising him as their pet.

“The thing is, you don’t know where they’ve landed,” Stafford said. “Somebody might have picked him up immediately.”

Mallee Ringneck parrots nesting

2009-09-27T15:40:00.002+10:00

Almost every day we have two or more Mallee Ringneck parrots in our garden or nearby. We love to have these colourful parrots flying around and feeding in the trees, grasses and bushes around our house. The only time they are not welcome is when they take to our ripening pears and other fruits. In many cases they eat the unripe fruit, so I hope they gets some pains in their little stomachs for damaging our fruit.

In recent weeks two of them have been hanging around one of the trees near the garage. This is an old growth mallee which could well be over a century old. Being so old it has developed several hollow branches. They have been fussing around one of the larger hollows, sitting on the branch, walking along a nearby branch, entering the hollow and sitting in it. Are they a pair? And are they preparing to nest in this hollow?

We can’t be certain that this is a genuine breeding attempt. We will just have to keep an eye on the situation - and have the camera at the ready.

Water bought to rescue rare parrots

2009-09-27T11:37:00.004+10:00

A GROUP of conservationists have pitched in to buy water to protect habitat for the threatened regent parrot species.

A small number of Nature Foundation SA supporters donated money to buy 6.8ML of water to save thirsty river red gums at Hogwash Bend, near Waikerie, on the River Murray.

The water was pumped through a sprinkler system at four different sites over the winter months.

River red gums provide the largest nesting site for regent parrots.

There are fewer than 500 breeding pairs of the threatened species left in the state.

Nature Foundation SA special projects consultant Angela Hawdon said it was important to protect the regent parrots' habitat.

"The birds nest in the hollows of river red gums within 60m of the water," she said. "By watering trees, we hope to increase their leaf cover and keep the trees alive for longer, and continue to provide a food source for the birds during their nesting period from August to December each year."

A further 6ML of water has been donated to the Hogwash Bend project to be used over spring to ensure the trees are leafy during nesting season.

The Riverland West Local Action Planning Association has provided the watering with a sprinkler system that has been moved around four different sites at Hogwash Bend.

The association's Anna Reid said keeping the river red gums alive would provide a corridor to the Mallee for the parrots.

Blue tits use ‘aromatherapy’ to disinfect nests

2009-09-09T08:27:00.001+10:00

A new study has revealed that birds called blue tits use “aromatherapy” to disinfect their nests.

These birds have been found to line their nests with aromatic plants like mint or lavender, which kill bacteria.

The study suggests that doing so helps the birds create more sterile environment for chicks, which, in turn, grow faster and have a better chance of survival.

However, individual blue tits are quite picky about which plants they use, and the study has yet not explained how they pass their knowledge on to other birds.

On Corsica, according to a report describing the study, blue tits also incorporate fresh fragments of aromatic plants, including lavender, mint and curry plants, into their nests.

“We hypothesised that aromatic plants used by blue tits had some anti-parasite properties, because most of these plants, or close species of the same genus, are traditional Mediterranean plants with well-known medicinal properties,” the BBC quoted Adele Mennerat, a biologist now at the University of Bergen in Norway, as saying.

Working with collaborators from France’s National Centre of Scientific Research and the University of Toulouse, Mennerat initially tested whether these plants deterred blow fly larvae that commonly live in tit nests and feed on chicks’ blood, significantly damaging their health.

“Despite repeated attempts we could never find any effect of these plants on blow fly infestation. So we tested the effects of these plants on the bacteria living on birds,” Mennerat says.

Writing about their findings in the journal Oecologia, the researchers said that aromatic plants, including lavender (Lavandula stoechas), apple mint (Mentha suaveolens), the curry plant (Helichrysum itlaicum) and Achillea ligustica, significantly changed the composition of bacterial communities living on blue tit nestlings.

“They reduce the number of different bacterial species, and the total number of bacteria, especially on chicks that are most vulnerable because they are both highly infested by blow fly larvae and carry great amounts of bacteria on their skin,” says Mennarat.

The researcher admitted that it was yet to be found out as to how volatile compounds produced by the aromatic plants kill the bacteria.

However, Mennerat said, blue tit chicks living in nests adorned with aromatic plants were found to grow faster and had a higher proportion of red blood cells, a strong indicator of a chick’s future chances of survival after fledging.

Mennerat suspects that living in a disinfected nest enables the chicks to allocate less energy to their immune systems and more to growing physically.

“One of the most unexpected findings we got was that female blue tits display individual preferences in their use of aromatic plant species,” she says.

“For example, in a territory with big bushes of lavender, for some reason blue tits at this site still collect mint that can only be found far away from their nests. We still don’t know why and how blue tits have such individual preferences,” she adds.

The researchers are also keen to discover how these personal aromatic preferences are passed on between birds. (ANI)

Birds learn from neighbours how to defend nests

2009-09-09T08:21:00.004+10:00

A new study by scientists at the University of Cambridge has shown that inexperienced reed warblers learn how to stop cuckoos from laying eggs in their nests by watching how other members of their species deal with the parasitic birds.

Reed warblers live with the threat that a cuckoo will infiltrate their nest, remove one of their eggs, replace it with a cuckoo egg, and leave cuckoo chicks to be raised by the unsuspecting reed warblers.

New experiments show that reed warblers will attack or “mob” cuckoos on their territory to prevent them from laying eggs in their nests and inexperienced birds learn from observing the mobbing behaviour.

This social learning was specific to cuckoos but not to harmless control birds, such as parrots, suggesting that the warblers are primed to learn defensive behaviour only in response to true threats.

“Our previous work showed that reed warblers distinguish cuckoos from other nest enemies and adjust their defences according to local parasitism risk. Our current work demonstrates that reed warblers can use social information to fine-tune their defences to the nature of the local threat,” said Dr. Justin Welbergen, co-author of the study.

It had previously been established that cuckoos (the parasites) and reed warblers (the hosts) are engaged in a co-evolutionary arms race. Once one had evolved an advantage, such as the reed warblers’ ability to eject the cuckoos’ eggs from their nests, the other would evolve a counter tactic, such as the cuckoo evolving eggs similar to those of the warbler.

However, although genetic adaptations were to be expected, it was a surprise to the scientists that social learning provided another mechanism by which the warblers rapidly increased their nest defence.

“Studies of co-evolutionary arms races between brood parasites and hosts have emphasized genetic adaptations and counter adaptations; however, our field experiments show that transmission through social learning provides a mechanism by which hosts can adjust their nest defence and so respond rapidly to changes in parasitism,” Welbergen said.

The findings are reported in June issue of the journal Science. (ANI)reed warblers, cuckoos, defend nests, nests, bird nests

World’s smallest parrot filmed in wild for first time

2009-09-09T08:16:00.001+10:00

The world’s smallest parrot, which is not much bigger than an adult person’s thumb, has been filmed in the wild for the first time.

According to a report by BBC News, an expedition team filming in Papua New Guinea for the BBC programme ‘Lost Land of the Volcano’ caught two of the buff-faced pygmy parrots on camera.

Another adult, which weighs less than half an ounce, was also trapped by the expedition team’s bird expert.

On average, buff-faced pygmy parrots (Micropsitta pusio) stand less than 9cm tall and weigh 11.5g (0.41oz).

They are found across the northern lowlands of the island of New Guinea from the west to the southeastern tip, up to an altitude of around 800m.

Males and females look similar, but females have less prominent markings on the head.

The birds have green feathers with yellowish plumage on their underparts; while their cheeks, face, and crown are more buff-coloured, hence their name.

BBC wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan first discovered a tiny nest belonging to two parrots deep within pristine rainforest.

The birds nest in termite mounds, using their beaks and claws to dig their way in before laying eggs in the hole created.

Buchanan staked out the nest from within a camouflaged hide, and was rewarded after a long wait when two birds returned.

He filmed the pair at their nest entrance, as the male and female reinforced their bond by rubbing against one another.

Later, another parrot was trapped unharmed by Dr Jack Dumbacher, an ornithologist from the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, US, who had accompanied the BBC expedition team.

Buff-faced pygmy parrots do not eat fruit and nuts but lichen and fungi.

However, so little is still known about their dietary habits that it has proved difficult to rear the birds in captivity. (ANI)

2009-09-07T07:30:00.002+10:00

The rare orange-bellied parrot (left); Ric Ressom monitors numbers of the bird

at Codrington. Photo: Simon O'Dwyer

HE call usually comes in April. They've been spotted fluttering through King Island, a small squadron heading across the strait. Numbering fewer than 150 worldwide, these little birds are rarer than the Siberian tiger. After their buffeted flight through the winds of the Roaring Forties, they scatter thinly along the mainland coast - as they once did in their thousands.
Some travel east to Gippsland, others gather on the wetlands of Werribee. A dozen or so fly west to the Portland area where Ric Ressom, having taken the alarm-raising phone call, picks up his binoculars and prepares to wander the marshes near the Yambuk wind farm.
For the next four months or so, Mr Ressom and fellow observer Helen Phillips will stand sentry among the reeds, monitoring the numbers of Australia's rarest bird - the orange-bellied parrot - making sure its dwindling numbers don't fly into the blades of a wind turbine.
''Despite what some people say, they're not stupid,'' Mr Ressom says. ''They seem to know to stay clear. Even so, you don't want to take chances.''
Last year, the turbines at Yambuk were shut down twice, when the observers alerted the wind farm operator Pacific Hydro, that a number of the parrots were feeding in the vicinity.
Pacific Hydro, which has established three of four planned wind farms in the Portland region, runs the monitoring program to fulfil its environmental protection obligations to the State Government.
The company is also a funding source for a Greening Australia project to expand salt-marsh habitat for orange-bellied parrots, one of the most endangered bird species in the world. The area is now rich with beaded glasswort, the parrot's preferred food.
The result is that the wetlands around the Yambuk turbines have become an orange-bellied parrot hot spot. Of all the sightings on the mainland last year - recorded by a network of about 100 Birds Australia volunteers as well as government and privately funded observers - the biggest group, nine birds, was seen near Yambuk 30 times.
''They're not to easy see,'' Mr Ressom said. ''They're pretty cryptic.
''Their alarm call [a repeated, hard-edged buzzing] is the best indicator … we flush them to see what numbers we've got. Once one bird takes off, the others go with it.
''They're easily spooked and will climb to a great height with a tinkling sound … or they'll fly low across the water with the reeds behind them. They're very crafty in the way they avoid detection.''
It's ironic that the parrot has found sanctuary near Yambuk, given the bird is probably best known for nearly shutting down a wind farm development at Bald Hills in Gippsland three years ago and was also named as a potential threat to the planned desalination plant at Wonthaggi.
Former premier Jeff Kennett blamed the bird for ruining his plan to relocate the Coode Island petrochemical plant (in truth, scuttled on economic grounds).
''The bird's been used as a political football for many years … yet it hasn't been responsible for blocking a single development,'' says Glenn Ehmke, Birds Australia's mainland recovery co-ordinator. ''Even at Bald Hills, [former Environment Minister Ian Campbell] did block it [the wind farm] at first, but went back on it very quickly.''
What's so special about a bird that could easily hide in a school shoe? Along with the swift parrot (also under threat), the orange-bellied parrot is one of only two parrots in the world that is fully migratory - meaning its entire population makes the perilous run across Bass Strait each year from its breeding grounds in southern Tasmania.
Aside from the parrot program, Pacific Hydro employs dog handlers to do monthly surveys for any birds and bats killed at its three Portland wind farms. Mr Ressom is also kept on through the year to monitor the impact on raptors. Says Pacific Hydro's Emily Wood: ''Our obligations for this kind of monitoring finished two years ago, but we have continued to do it as it gives us reliable information.'' On that note, Birds Australia has no complaints.

Carolina Parakeet

2009-09-06T11:04:00.003+10:00

The Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis)^[1] was the only parrot species native to the eastern United States. It was found from the Ohio Valley to the Gulf of Mexico, and lived in old forests along rivers. It was the only species at the time classified in the genus Conuropsis. It was called puzzi la née ("head of yellow") or pot pot chee by the Seminole and kelinky in Chikasha (Snyder & Russell, 2002).

The last wild specimen was killed in Okeechobee County, Florida in 1904, and the last captive bird died at the Cincinnati Zoo on 21 February 1918. This was the male specimen "Incas", who died within a year of his mate "Lady Jane." Coincidentally, Incas died in the same aviary cage in which the last Passenger Pigeon, "Martha", had died nearly four years prior.^[2] It was not until 1939, however, that it was determined that the Carolina Parakeet had become extinct.

At some date between 1937 and 1955, three parakeets resembling this species were sighted and filmed in the Okefenokee Swamp of Georgia. However, the American Ornithologists Union concluded after analyzing the film, that they had probably filmed feral parakeets. Additional reports of the bird were made in Okeechobee County, Florida until the late 1920s, but these are not supported by specimens.

The species may have appeared as a very rare vagrant in places as far north as Southern Ontario. A few bones, including a pygostyle found at the Calvert Site in Southern Ontario came from the Carolina Parakeet. The possibility remains open that this particular specimen was taken to Southern Ontario for ceremonial purposes

Parrots as pets: Caring for parrots is no simple task

2009-09-05T15:06:00.001+10:00

Many high schools have student clubs that meet after school to hone their Latin, skiing or golf skills, but Magnificat High School in Rocky River has an unusual student group.

About 30 students at the private Catholic school for girls join the Animal Outreach Club each year to help animals. They collect supplies for local animal shelters and rescue groups, make catnip toys and treats and raise money for local and national animal welfare groups.

The group meets monthly and occasionally invites animal rescuers and their adoptable dogs and cats to the school to help socialize the pets.

Animal Outreach was founded by two students 10 years ago, when art teacher Kathleen DesForges agreed to be the group's advisor. She remains enthusiastically involved.

"I was so honored and jumped at the chance to work with these compassionate students and provide some measure of comfort to the homeless dogs and cats in our area shelters," she said. "What a joy it has been these last 10 years."

This year's co-president is senior Olivia Biello, of Olmsted Falls.

"We need to be the voice of the animals," she said. "This club gives Magnificat High School the opportunity to help local animals and give them the voice they need."

More Animals in the News:

PEACLondon is a Timneh African grey parrot available for adoption from the Parrot Education & Adoption Center based in Olmsted Falls.

Parrots as pets: Caring for parrots is no simple task, so the local Parrot Education & Adoption Center hosts seminars on the long-lived, highly intelligent birds. Learn about parrot personalities, including the popular cockatoos and African greys from noon to 4 p.m. Sept. 13 at the Independence Technology Center, 6801 Brecksville Road. It's free. But psychologist and animal behavior expert Susan Friedman's two-day workshop on living with parrots costs $75. It runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Oct. 17 and 18 at the Hampton Inn, 10305 Cascade Crossings in Brooklyn. Register for the events at clevelandpeac.org or call 440-669-0082.

HSGATurk needs a home.

Michael Vick protests: Protesters are expected outside each NFL stadium across the country where there is a game opening day, Sept.13. In Cleveland, protesters will gather at 11:30 a.m. at the West Third Street parking lot and walk to the Cleveland Browns Stadium carrying signs and passing out fliers about dog fighting. Get details at http://tinyurl.com/ma3jhk. After serving nearly two years in prison for dog fighting and killing six pit bulls, quarterback Vick signed a $6.8 million contract with the Philadelphia Eagles.

Dog fights in Ohio: The Humane Society of the United States has paid $14,470 in reward money to three tipsters since 2008 for information that led police to three dog-fighting rings in and near Dayton, where law enforcers have made wiping out dog fighting one of their priorities. Anyone with information anywhere in Ohio is asked to call 877-TIP-HSUS.

HSGAAlmond needs a home.

Gala in Summit County: The Humane Society of Greater Akron's ninth annual fund-raising gala will have a James Bond theme. It's set for 6 to 11 p.m. Sept. 26 at the Akron City Centre Hotel, 20 W. Mill St. The price is $65 for hors d'oeuvres only and $125 for a full dinner. Partygoers will play roulette and other games of chance and participate in auctions featuring a vintage 25-inch strand of Mikimoto pearls, an Accutron 10 diamond men's Chronograph watch, a catered dinner with wine for 10 at your home and a Cavaliers jersey signed by Shaquille O'Neal. Learn more at summithumane.org or call 330-657-2010, Ext. 103.

Donating wisely: The 2009 Watchdog Report on 162 animal and environmental charities helps donors and people preparing

Merritt Clifton

their wills find charities that share their priorities and get the most out of a dollar. The report looks at each group's top salaries, their programs and how they spend their money. Most donors don't want their money spent on seven-figure salaries, plush offices and glossy fund-raising appeals, says investigative journalist Merritt Clifton. The Watchdog lets you know which groups spend most of their money directly helping animals. Get it for $25 at animalpeoplenews.org or Animal People, Box 960, Clinton, WA, 98236, or call 360-579-2505 to use a credit card.

Biased parrots better at problem-solving than ambidextrous counterparts

2009-09-05T14:22:00.000+10:00

Parrots that are strongly right- or left-footed are better at problem-solving tasks than their ambidextrous counterparts, according to a new study.

Lead researchers Maria Magat and Culum Brown at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, worked with eight species of Australian parrot, some of which are primarily left-biased - gang-gang cockatoos, for instance, are 100 per cent left-footed - others right-biased and the rest “ambidextrous”.

They studied their side preference by noting which eye they preferred for looking at food.

During the study, the researchers put the birds to various tasks, including foraging for different seeds sprinkled in a tray of pebbles and raising a hanging seed basket up to their beaks using their claws.

They found that the birds that had a strong bias towards using one side or the other were faster at the tasks than species that showed no preference between left or right.

All animals have cerebral lateralisation, meaning that their brains are divided into two hemispheres responsible for processing different tasks.

Strongly lateralised individuals are strongly “handed” - or strongly “footed” in the case of birds.

“Our study shows that strong lateralisation improves problem-solving ability and foraging in birds, which is an evolutionary advantage,” New Scientist quoted Brown as saying.

“It allows each side of the brain to become specialised at different tasks, so, for instance, the right side of the parrot’s brain can process foraging tasks without being slowed by interference from the left side of the brain,” the expert added.

Polly wants a parrot picnic

2009-08-30T11:46:00.002+10:00

Parrots, it is said, have their own personalities.

Snuggles shows off for the camera, spreading her white wings to reveal their yellow undersides, like the surprisingly extravagant lining of a suit coat.

Socko doesn’t like anyone, even her owner, Mike Edwards, to peek under her wings.

Some birds nervously pluck out their own feathers. Others will give their owners a sociable little kiss. Some are sweet-natured, and others – often helped along by neglect or abuse – can be mean.

The people who gathered Saturday in Franklin Park like all kinds.

“Their personalities are just amazing,” said Chris Sheasley, 27, who works at a pet store and helps run a bird rescue operation for cockatiels. “You watch any bird long enough and they all have their own individual personalities. You have dog people, cat people – I’m a bird person.”

Organized by Pampered Parrots Avian Rescue, the picnic brought together parrot lovers of all kinds. More than 20 people and 10 parrots – ranging from umbrella cockatoos to cockatiels to green-cheeked conures to African grays – gathered for the event.

Several of those attending met through Pampered Parrots, owned by Bret and Tracy Conant, and have taken up the cause of bird rescue.

There’s a pretty big need. The Conants have rescued and found homes for more than 500 birds in nine years; Sheasley has 23 birds under his care now. Bret Conant said a lot of people buy parrots without realizing that they can take some effort.

“People will get into birds without researching it,” he said. “They don’t realize that all birds make noise, all birds can destroy furniture and other things, all birds can make a mess.”

Most of the people at Saturday’s picnic know one another; many carried someone else’s bird on their shoulder. And most of them have more birds at home.

Jeanne Ettenborough, 67, of Spokane, had to stop and think before saying how many parrots she has. She has “a lesser cockatoo, a severe mini-mackaw, a brown-eyed Meyer parrot, a regular little Meyer parrot, and I’ve just got a Jardine, two cockatiels and a little parakeet,” she said.

“About nine, I think,” she said. “Oh – I have a love bird, too. I forgot the love bird.”

Ettenborough said her parrot habit became serious about 14 years ago, when a little Meyer parrot followed her around in a store.

“The bird actually picked me,” she said.

Other bird owners tell a similar tale.

“My granddad taught me you never pick the dog, the dog picks you,” said Edwards, eating a sandwich while Socko perched on his shoulder. “That’s pretty much how this was. … He picked me.”

Favorite snack foods for parrots

2009-08-30T11:39:00.002+10:00

George Sommers wrote:-

The munchies: an overwhelming craving for food, especially of the junk persuasion - parrots get it, too! Pippy the Goffin's cockatoo offers the following culinary suggestions.

Millet spray is clusters of tiny grain seeds bound together which Pippy likes to grasp in one foot while crunching. Bonus point: small, often finicky birds like parakeets love it, too.

Summertime is the berries - and blueberries are a delicious seasonal treat. They're small, manageable and eagerly devoured, so they don't make as much of a mess as many other foods. Strawberries are another favorite fruit treat - but the juice that stains birdy's beak will make him look like a miniature vulture!

Pippy espcecially enjoys picking the kernels off ears of raw corn on the cob. Another veggie fave is sliced carrots.

When our late blooming summer segues into fall (hopefully not for several weeks) chopped or sliced apples are on the menu. Make sure to rinse off these or any other fruits or vegetables before offering.

When the house people are dining, Pippy is not shy about announcing her desire for a piece of the action, especially when the action consists of rice from the local Mexican takeout, pasta and pizza - and don't skimp on the tomato sauce!

Unsalted peanuts in the shell double as a treat and an activity as your bird eagerly cracks open that shell to get at the delicious prize inside.strawberries, millet

Device to aid farmers, save parrots

2009-08-29T10:41:00.000+10:00

Wonderful! Now if you could just start a program replanting the parrot’s natural food sources, and nesting boxes, maybe they could rebound. What about asking some of the men in Northward to build boxes for the parrots? And, while helping parrots, what about building nesting boxes for your owls? The sugar planters here in Florida have started building owl boxes and the rodent problem is decreasing dramatically. Just a suggestion. - Dianne Jones

Bird’s brain: Nature center’s parrot stays sharp with movies, mischief

2009-08-11T08:35:00.005+10:00

Photo by Mike Yoder. Enlarge photo.

Tino, a scarlet macaw at the Prairie Park Nature Center, can shout out hello and goodbye to visitors as well as mimic several other laughs and bits of communication.

Twenty-year-old Tino’s favorite movie is “The Wizard of Oz.” He likes to dance and sing along when he watches.

And if that’s not absurd enough, it gets better: Tino’s a bird. He’s a scarlet macaw — a colorful type of parrot native to South America — who lives at the Prairie Park Nature Center, 2730 Harper St.

“He seems to get a kick out of anything musical,” says Marty Birrell, nature interpretive supervisor. “He’s alternately adorable and obnoxious.”

According to workers at Prairie Park, Tino’s got rhythm. He likes to strut his stuff whenever he can. He loves movies — particularly musicals — bobs his body back and forth rhythmically with song. Singing along also comes naturally. He’s been known to spout out lyrics to the Oompa-Loompa songs from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

And he also likes cartoons. Birrell speculates that’s because the programs are as animated as Tino himself. A neurotic attention hound, Tino likes to mess around with the kids who come to see him. His antics can be entertaining or annoying.

Entertaining: When children say hi to Tino, he waves his wings back and says “hello.”

Tino - Scarlet Macaw

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Tino is a Scarlet Macaw at the Prairie Park Nature Center who can welcome visitors with a "hello" or a "goodbye" plus vocalize other bits and pieces of conversation and laughter. Two of Tino's favorite things to do is to get a spray water bath and watch musicals like "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" Enlarge video

Annoying: While children are at the center, Tino randomly shrieks or screams, using, as Birrell calls it, his loud voice.

“Here at the nature center, he’s best known for frightening small children,” Birrell says. “We have a big sign up warning everyone. It’s kind of tiresome.”

When kids shuffle into the nature center, they tend to crowd around Tino in awe. They instantly try to beckon a response. They’ll call out things like, “pretty bird,” and “Polly want a cracker?”

Tino usually sits smugly on his perch, unresponsive, until the children grow bored and amble off. The moment their backs are turned, though, Tino launches into a loud shriek, evoking tears and screams in the youngsters. Older kids get a charge from Tino’s scare tactics, but toddlers react differently.

“He can make a small toddler’s ears hurt,” Birrell says. “We’ll hear his shriek and then hear the sobs and know he’s gotten another victim.”

But Tino doesn’t shriek and scream to be malicious. It’s all in fun. After screaming loudly, he throws his head and wings back and cackles, as if it’s all a big joke.

And Tino doesn’t just play tricks on visitors. He also works. He’s a regular prop in the nature center’s educational programs that feature rain forest animals. The programs are designed to educate children about birds, rain forests and adaptation.

Tino loves participating, but when he’s not working, he gets to have some fun: The center is closed on Mondays, known to Tino as “movie night.” Viewed as enrichment time, movie night serves to stimulate Tino and the other birds at Prairie Park. Parrots are intelligent birds, and they crave interaction. If they aren’t properly stimulated they will misbehave, self-mutilate or can even go insane.

All of the parrots at the nature center watch movies on Mondays. Duncan and Maury, brother and sister African Greys, enjoy wildlife movies the most. Anything featuring other birds is a big hit. And cartoons also are a favorite. To top it off, Birrell sometimes will cart in the crow, Edgar, to watch movies with the parrots. The birds talk, sing and have a good time.

Andy Wolff has worked at the nature center for three years, and it took him two just to get comfortable handling Tino without gloves.

Now Wolff and Tino have a good relationship,

and Wolf more or less trusts the bird.

Photo by Mike Yoder

Andy Wolf and Tino have a pretty good relationship and Wolf can handle the scarlet macaw without gloves. Tino can’t fly, so he can’t physically hurt visitors, but some children get upset when Tino shrieks loudly for attention.

“Tino has a gentle side too,” Wolff says. “He’ll hold my hand and preen my arm hairs, taking care of me. He’s a pretty sweet guy, really.”

There's no place like home

2009-08-09T21:30:00.002+10:00

Lola back in her cage where she belongs

HAMPTON — Sharon Chang said her beloved parrot, Lola, is back home where she belongs after disappearing last week. After three days Lola was discovered four towns away in Epping.

"She had a little adventure, but she is happy to be home, and we are happy she is home," said Chang.

The four-year-old African gray parrot, which had never been outside before, was safely returned to Chang thanks to an Epping couple who found the exotic gray bird with a bright red tail. The couple contacted Epping's animal control officer who remarkably located Chang via an Internet Web site.

"It really was a miracle they found her," said Chang, who had been desperately searching for Lola since she accidently flew out of her home on Sunday, July 26. "I couldn't sleep or eat."

Chang said Lola flew out a sliding door that was partly open in her family's newly installed sun room at their home on Towle Farm Road.

"Something startled her and instead of flying back to her cage like she usually does, she flew out the door and up into the trees," said Chang. "We couldn't get her to come down."

Lola eventually left the tree, her owner said, and headed west.

"I was up all night," Chang said. "I kept going out and calling her name.

"I would also whistle because she likes to do the music of the 'Charge' baseball theme," the Hampton woman said. "I was hoping she would respond, but there was nothing.'

Chang spent the next morning going door-to-door asking her neighbors if they had seen the parrot and spent the afternoon contacting every local veterinarian in hopes that someone had turned Lola in.

She also put ads in the newspaper, hung flyers all around town, and posted a description of her pet on the lost-and-found section on Craigslist.org.

"She was more than just a pet to me," Chang said. "She was like my little baby."

After three days, Chang began to think the worst.

"Now I'm not Catholic, but I was praying to Saint Anthony because I know he helps people find lost things," Chang said. "I really didn't think I would see her again."

It was then she received a call from Epping Animal Control Officer Bill Hansen who informed her that he had Lola in his possession.

"I couldn't believe it," Chang said. "She flew 15 miles away.

"I'm not sure where she thought she was going, but God bless her, she was OK," the Hampton woman said.

Hansen picked up the bird after a couple who lives on Prescott Road called around 7 a.m. on Wednesday, July 29, to report finding a "lonely bird."

"They knew the bird was domesticated because it was just sitting on their porch even though their cat was there," Chang said.

"Lola is not afraid of cats," she said. "I have five cats and Lola loves to terrorize them. She loves to chase them and bite their tales."

Chang said Hansen picked up the bird, brought it home and went on the Internet to see if anyone reported a lost parrot in the area.

That's when he discovered Chang's ad posted on Craigslist.com.

"Craigslist has gotten a bad name, but it does do good," Chang said. "I'm eternally thankful for whoever Craig really is."

Chang said Hansen took great care of Lola.

"She was just tired and very stressed," Chang said of the bird. "When we got into the car she kept saying 'Good night Lola. Good night Lola.'

"That is what she says every night when she wants to go back in her cage and go to sleep," her owner said.

Chang said she tried to give Hansen a cash reward, but he refused to take it. So she ended up giving the award to the couple who found Lola.

Since being home, Chang said Lola hasn't left her side.

"It was nice to hear her voice again," Chang said. "A lot of people think parrots just mimic what you say, but she actually carries on a conversation.

"The very first morning she was back home she watched as I poured more coffee and said, 'Do you want more coffee?'" Chang said. "I thought 'Ahhh, my baby's home.'"

Banham Zoo breeding endangered parrots

2009-08-09T21:25:00.000+10:00

Banham Zoo's latest and most colourful arrivals have shocked staff by suddenly being classified endangered - but staff are aiming to save the species.

The zoo received two sun conure parrots in June, thinking at the time that the birds were common in their native South America.

However, since then, the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) has officially labelled them an endangered species.

It is now thought there may be just one flock remaining in the wild, found in Guyana, containing as few as 200 birds.

Numbers of the brightly-coloured creatures have dwindled because of illegal trapping, as birds can be sold for profit as pets.

“The news came as a real surprise as there had been no indication that the species was in such trouble,” said animal manager Mike Woolham.

“Banham Zoo has held sun conures for a number of years now and we have had considerable breeding success which I am sure we will be able to achieve again.”

The two birds were received this summer from a specialist parrot zoo in Lincolnshire, and joined an existing pair at Banham

Soon the group of four will have a lot more company.

Before the end of the month another 10 birds are due to arrive, which the zoo is hoping will form the basis of a breeding group that can bolster numbers of the endangered species.

The parrots can be seen in the Bird Garden at Banham Zoo.

Threatened species – Wallum Ground Parrot

2009-08-08T10:36:00.002+10:00

Date: Saturday 22nd August 2009

Location: Noosa National Park

Only three in the world and there’s one right here

Ground Parrot (Pezoporus wallicus)

The Ground Parrot is a stunningly beautiful bird and one of only three ground dwelling parrots in the world. Sightings of parrot have been recorded in the Noosa National Park including Marcoola, Coolum, Emu Swamp, Weyba and Noosa Link section.

During the free spring Wildflower Festival 15 – 29 August, don’t miss the opportunity to learn more about this elusive bird, hear its distinctive song and maybe even catch a glimpse.

Date & Time: 22 August, 5.20 pm – 6.15 pm
Wildflower Festival: 15 – 29 August
What: Join Lyn Boston in the closed heath and sedge lands of Noosa National Park to learn more about the endangered Ground Parrot.
Where: Noosa National Park
Bookings: Sunshine Coast Council on 5420 8200 – Places limited – Bookings essential
Cost: Free

The following article has been written by Lyn Boston from the Bat Rescue Group

The Ground Parrot is listed as a “vulnerable” species under the Queensland Nature Conservation (Wildlife) Regulation 1994. It is a distinctive bright green and yellow bird with a head and body similar in length to a lorikeet. The ground parrot has long toes and a very long yellow-barred green tail.

The ground parrot is a specialist of sedgeland and heathlands on the Sunshine Coast, eats up to 40 different seed types and fashions a domed nest cavity on the ground. As the name suggests the ground parrot spends most of its time on the ground making it particularly available to predators such as feral cats and foxes.

The nest is screened from view, and generally forms a tunnel. The female incubates the eggs and broods the young from September to December. The incubation period lasts for up to four weeks, during which incubation the female is fed by the male, as are the young when they hatch. Clutch size ranges from one to six.

The ground parrot is shy, elusive and a reluctant flyer. If disturbed all you will hear is the flapping of wings, and see a yellowish-green blur before it dives back into the vegetation for cover.

Probably the most interesting behaviour of these birds is the timing of their calls. They are crepuscular, that is they call pre sunrise and post sunset and are rarely heard outside these times. They are first birds to call in the morning and the last ones at night. Often the only way of determining the presence of these shy birds is to listen for their call. The call consists of a series of piercing, resonating whistles, rising in steps, with each note flowing on almost unbroken, but abruptly higher than the preceding note.

The ground parrot’s habitat – coastal heathland – has been under threat for some time along our coastline, as many areas are cleared for housing and development. The ground parrot has found sanctuary in national parks stretching from Marcoola to Noosa. These habitats provide a high abundance and diversity of food, adequate cover and suitable roosting and nesting opportunities for the ground parrot.

Monitoring of this species to determine the distribution and abundance has been undertaken in Noosa National Park for a number of years and will be continued to ensure all possible measures are taken to preserve this special bird.

A parrot diet of pellets . . . and pizza?

2009-08-07T22:06:00.000+10:00

When it comes to chowing down, variety is the spice of life and everyone wants a change of taste, including the feathered members of the family. “Pet birds can be allowed to eat the same food you might prepare for yourself, and in fact, prefer such food, and it can be healthy for them”, says Dr. Alice Blue-McLendon, a veterinarian who specializes in birds at Texas A&M University's College of Veterinary Medicine. “It's usually okay to give birds what you might be eating at the time.”

Of course, fresh fruits and vegetables are the healthiest (for them and for us!), but eggs, cheese, pasta, rice, potatoes, noodles, bits of meat or fish and other people foods are okay for your bird to ingest. "In general, foods that are rich in protein, vitamins and calcium are good for birds," Blue-McLendon says.

However, there are some foods that can be detrimental to the bird’s long-term health and should be given in moderation—like those containing a high sugar content. Most foods with sugar are perfectly safe for birds to have a bite or even two, but the quantities should be limited to a very small amount and only on rare occasions rather than daily. Parrots seem to love sweets and can become little junk food junkies if allowed.

Foods high in salt aren’t good for most people or for birds, either; since parrots are so much smaller, a little bit goes a long way. Some foods can simply be taken out of the preparation cycle before salt is added so the parrot can enjoy a safe serving. If your parrot goes nuts over cooked veggies and you salt your food, then give them their serving before adding the seasoning. Unsalted crackers and other processed foods low on sodium can be can safely shared with the flock.

Any food that has a high fat content should likewise be limited. In the wild, parrots eat very little fat; what they do eat is mainly from bugs and other protein sources. Certain parrot species, particularly Amazons and cockatoos, can become obese and suffer from food- related issues like us. "Some birds need a low-fat diet. Too much cholesterol may contribute to heart disease. Also, many types of birds are prone to get hardening of the arteries much the same way as it occurs in people," Blue-McLendon notes.

There are a few things that can actually kill your parrot as far as human food goes, ones they should never, ever, be allowed to sample. These absolute no-no’s include avocadoes, chocolate, alcoholic beverages, seeds of any fruit, raw meat, uncooked eggs, or any food that are moldy or have spoiled.

Most everything else that you eat can be shared with your parrot. The more variety your bird eats, the better its health will be, the more vibrant the feather colors and the happier it will be. But remember to always use some common sense and dole out the delectable tidbits in small, bird-sized portions.

Endangered bird on display

2009-08-01T10:29:00.001+10:00

The endangered Swift Parrot goes on show in a Tasmanian zoo today for the first time.

A Hobart breeder gave 15 parrots to Tasmania Zoo near Launceston to take part in a breeding program.

The zoo's owner Dick Warren says it's a great coup for any wildlife park.

"It's been on the endangered list for a long time and they're getting very rare," Mr Warren said.

"We've been fighting for six years to get the Swift Parrot and to have a breeding program."

"We've been fighting for a fair while now for permits and we've just got them through - we've had to build a special enclosure," he said.

Reading your parrots body language can help relationship

2009-07-30T10:59:00.001+10:00

We all use non-verbal cues to convey our thoughts and feelings. An attentive listener will tilt their head slightly forward, while a bored person looks anywhere but at the person who is talking to them. Leaning one’s body towards another person says “I would like to be closer to you”, while crossing one’s arms in front of their chest telegraphs “don’t come any closer”.

New parrot owners are sometimes quick to misjudge their bird's behavior and wonder why they received a bite or why the bird fluttered off their hand. Does the bird want you to come to it, or move away? If you start to understand what bird body language means, it's easy to read bird behavior. Here are a few things to watch for:

The “Sucker Punch”: Parrots, notably the African grey, will put their head down, as if wanting to be scratched. But the moment you begin to rub its head, it reaches around and gives you a big nip. Avian behavioral consultant Liz Wilson has coined this “the sucker punch” and says when the bird has its head down with eyes looking to the side or closed, it is usually prepared to bite.

Eye pinning: In some parrots with light colored eyes, you will notice the pupil dilating in and out when the bird becomes excited. This happens a lot in Amazon parrots, macaws, Poicephalus, and greys, but is not uncommon with any parrot. Eye pinning means a heightened excited state, so this isn't a good time to stick your finger into your parrot's face –you might just get a bloody finger.

Tail flaring: Birds shake their tails after preening or to release tension, but tail flaring is different –this is when the tail feathers are flared out like a fan. Amazons are prone to this, but other types of parrots do this as well. This indicates an excited state, and often appears with eye pinning.

Beak clicking: The clicking of the beak can indicate an excited state, but can also be a warning to stay away.

Feather fluffing: A bird will ruffle and fluff its feathers after preening to remove debris, and will also fluff its feathers when it's cold. If a bird has its feathers continually fluffed, it may be ill and is trying to keep warm.

Beak wiping: A bird will wipe its beak on a perch or cage bars after eating to remove debris. This is normal behavior and is nothing to worry about.

Crest position: Some birds, like cockatiels, cockatoos, and hawk headed parrots have head crests that are raised or lowered to indicate emotional state. If you have one of these types of birds, watch to see what prompts the bird to raise its crest - is it excited, fearful, or happy?

Shivering: Birds shiver and shake after taking a bath -- their breast muscles involuntarily contract and expand to create heat in the body. A bird may also seem to shiver when it's very excited. Quaker parrots are known to "quake," which is how they got their name.

Flapping wings: Birds often hold tight to the perch and flap madly as if wanting to take off in flight. They do this for exercise and when they're happy, and it can also be part of breeding behavior.

Head bobbing: Head bobbing can indicate that a bird is anxious to go somewhere, or perhaps is regurgitating to you in an effort to bond with you. Very young parrots bob their heads a lot, as do Quaker parrots.

Studying your bird’s body language and understanding what they are expressing can make a difference if they’re content—or determined to send you to a quick trip to the first aid kit!

The playful parrots who play catch with the family dog

2009-07-26T11:23:00.003+10:00

Game on: One of the two-year-old Macaws chases after Flitzer the dog

Teasing the family dog and raiding apple trees, these playful parrots love nothing more than to cause mischief.

Pictured in the German countryside, female Macaws Ava and Mio cruise the skies looking for fun and food.

The yellow and blue pair of birds, aged two, have proved themselves to be quite a handful for their owner Julian Knott.

Steer clear! The bright blue and yellow bird charges directly for the hapless dog

The birds often charge at Julian's dog Flitzer and have even riled a neighbour's horse.

'Its an interactive game between the birds and Flitzer our dog,' says 25-year-old Julian from Hamburg.

'The games are sometimes initiated by the parrots and sometimes by Flitzer.

'But in the blink of an eye the hunter becomes the hunted and Flitzer follows the Macaws.

Carry on racing: The other bird joins in as the trio zoom around the field

'We let them out each morning and it only takes a few minutes before they have emptied the apple tree,' adds Julian, a helicopter pilot.

'After they have eaten they both rest in a tree, just to become active towards the evening.

'This is playtime for the parrots and they even manage to play with Lasso, a 15-year-old horse from the stable behind us.'

Out of breath: Flitzer has a rest while the parrots refuel for more fun

Julian says that even the locals have become acquainted to the exotic birds, who have a wingspan of 130 centimetres.

'Sometimes they call me, that they have seen them on the river, bathing or visiting a shop,' he says.

'We don't care - they come home every evening. They feel totally at home with us and we don't have to be scared - until the next morning.'

On horseback: The mischievous pair make friends with a neighbour's horse
Winged menace: The notorious pair fly free during the day before returning home to rest at nigh

Rare swift parrot sightings south of Narooma

2009-07-17T22:12:00.006+10:00

LOCAL birdwatchers have reported the arrival of up to 30 per cent of the total population of the highly endangered Swift Parrot in forests on the Far South Coast within the past fortnight.

The small green Swift Parrot is among the most endangered parrots in the country with less than a thousand breeding pairs remaining.

The species annually migrates between Tasmania and southeastern Australia but has dramatically declined in numbers because of habitat disturbance and an unfortunate habit of colliding into windows.

NPWS Ranger, Robyn Kesby, said today that anyone who knows anything about this rare species is very excited about the news they have arrived in such numbers on the Far South Coast.

"Seeing one would be a real treat but local bird group, the Far South Coast Birdwatchers and experts from Birds Australia, have reported seeing as many as 350 in one group at Corunna State Forest south of Narooma and another group of 200 at Nelsons Beach in Mimosa Rocks National Park," Ms Kesby said.

Chris Tzaros from Birds Australia said that there was some concern earlier when Swift Parrots were not appearing at their more regular locations this season.

"I think that it is likely the serious drought conditions which have impacted on their favoured locations such as the box-ironbark woodlands of central Victoria and the inland slopes of the divide in NSW combined with favourable flowering in coastal spotted gum forests is why we are seeing them in such numbers on the Far South Coast.

Local birdwatcher and photographer, Max Sutcliffe said today that he was thrilled to be able to see and photograph this rare visitor.

"When I heard that Chris Tzaros from Birds Australia had found over 350 in Corunna State Forest feeding on spotted gum I immediately thought of Nelsons Beach in Mimosa Rocks National Park.

"I went out there on June 20 and much to my delight saw more than 20 feeding on blossom and lerp.

"On following visits their numbers increased to more than 100 within two weeks, some seen feeding on Banksia flowers also. This was an awesome experience as I watched two flocks of over 50 fly in and they filled the sky," Mr Sutcliffe said.

Because it is so rare the Swift Parrot is the focus of intensive efforts nationally to reverse its decline. A National Recovery Program is active for the Swift Parrot with the help of volunteers in NSW, ACT, Qld, Vic and SA who help conduct national surveys twice annually that track the movement of this species across the landscape.

2009-07-16T11:33:00.002+10:00

NOT to be outdone by their feathered cousins in the pavilion next door, the Gympie Cage Bird Club also held its annual bird show at the showgrounds last weekend.

The show was a popular drawcard among breeders, with 24 exhibitors and 319 birds on display.

Some of the birds exhibited on the day included canaries, budgerigars, cockatiels, parrots and finches.

The day was a busy one for all involved. Besides the judging there were other attractions including a cent auction and a bird sale.

Winners included Pamela Window who won the champion cockatiel, Zoe Doyle who took out champion large parrot, Jenny Stolberg was awarded champion finch and Betty D'Arcy won champion border canary.

Cage Bird Club secretary Betsy Quince said it was a great family day.

“There was a continual flow of people - very rewarding for all the people concerned,” she said.

Taxidermy in his blood

2009-07-08T10:02:00.002+10:00

O some, Ben Carrillo’s backyard shed could be considered a mortuary.

It’s filled with the carcasses of mammals, fish and birds.

At times the stench of rotting crustaceans or strong chemicals permeate the surrounding air.

But to Mr Carillo, it is a time capsule of what could be lost.

For about 20 years he has been a taxidermist and sees taxidermy as one way to preserve rare animals and capture their beauty.

“I’m a bird lover and animal lover,” he said.

“I don’t want to see nice animals going to waste – that’s probably the biggest attraction to it.”

His obsession with taxidermy began when he was breeding budgies in his early twenties.

He wanted to preserve his rare crested budgie and decided to mount it himself after discovering the price to get it done professionally.

Mr Carrillo said the budgie ultimately looked more like a giraffe than a bird, but he was not disheartened.

He has since specialised in mounting fish and birds but will mount “just about anything.”

“I’ve seen it all. I’ve done a camel, I’ve done a monkey, I’ve done all types of things that you can think of,” he said.

His clientele includes hunters, pet owners and museums.

“There’s not really too much that I find strange because I’ve had people bring around their pet rats and they have little costumes with them.”

But Mr Carrillo also said taxidermy played an important role in preserving the memory of endangered or extinct wildlife.

“There are species lost every week,” he said.

“This is the only way we’re going to be able to see them.”

He said that it also provided a way for pet owners to hold on to their beloved animals.

Mr Carrillo said the taxidermy industry was cut-throat and the future was not looking good for what he called a “very secretive business”.

He said five Victorian taxidermists retired last year and with no courses in Melbourne, the business relied solely on mentorship.

“I’m probably the youngest taxidermist out there at the moment, and I’m 43 years old. Now everyone is getting older in this game and there aren’t many newcomers,” he said.

He said that not many taxidermists would take on apprentices for fear of them stealing clients.

“You’ll see a couple of newcomers in the Yellow Pages and then they’ll be gone.”

Mr Carrillo said with little money to be made, his venture into the industry came from love.

“Honestly, once taxidermy is in your blood you can’t get away from it,” he said.

The business to make your business work more profitably

2009-07-04T20:22:00.001+10:00

The business to make your business work more profitably

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Budgies and Playgyms

2009-05-10T13:48:00.006+10:00

Pictures of budgies and Budgie World Playgyms. Budgies exercise freely enjoying the fascination brought to them by the intriguing gyms that can be redesigned at any time.

Parrots teach man to speak again

2009-03-05T11:05:00.002+11:00

A US fireman who lost his power of speech in a traffic accident has been taught to speak again by parrots।

Brian Wilson, from Damascus, Maryland, suffered life-threatening injuries in the accidnet 14 years ago. He also lost his ability to speak.

But he now claims that the chatter of pet parrots confounded the bleak outlook of doctors, who were convinced that he would spend the rest of his life in bed at a nursing home.

"Two birds taught me to talk again," he said. "I had such a bad head injury I was never supposed to talk any more than a two-year-old."

But two of the birds that he had had as pets since he was a child "just kept talking to me and talking to me".

"Then all of a sudden, a word popped out, then two, then more."

To show his gratitude to the birds who helped him on the path to rehabilitation, Mr Wilson has devoted his life to feathered pets whose owners are no longer able or want to keep them.

He now shares his home with about 80 brightly plumed exotic birds, from snow-white cockatoos to scarlet or blue and green macaws to African grey parrots.

He has set up a foundation called the Wilson Parrot Foundation, which also offers the services of the birds to entertain at birthday parties and corporate events.

"You wonder why I rescue birds? They helped me to talk again, so now I take care of them," he said.

Bird boom in Australian desert

2009-02-16T15:46:00.000+11:00

There's a bird boom in the dead heart.

Kangaroos, flies, dead grass and dust are the first things that usually spring to mind when contemplating the Australian desert.

But cooler weather, coupled with wet season rains, has turned the vast outback into a green wonderland. And that means the birds are booming.

Wildlife officers are urging visitors and locals alike to dust off the binoculars and hit the highway for a spot of birdwatching.

“Our parks and reserves have been inundated with exotic travellers,” said ranger Mark Carter. Nomadic birds such as rare honeyeaters and budgies are now scouring the desert country looking for the best conditions following recent summer rains.

Resident birds, including the Western bowerbirds and Spinifex pigeons, are also enjoying a bumper season. “The cooler and wetter weather has caused the vegetation growth and insect populations to boom and attract birds from all over Australia's vast arid zone,” said Mr Carter.

“The population of Rufous songlarks have exploded and while they may look unremarkable their rolling melody of sweet notes mixed with metallic bleeps and burbles sound sensational.”

Sites close to the desert town of Alice Springs have been singled out by the park ranger, including the Alice Springs Telegraph Station, Simpsons Gap, Emilie and Jessie Gaps.

“Birds are our noisiest and most easily spotted form of wildlife in the Red Centre but people often overlook them,” Mr Carter said.

“It doesn't matter whether you are a veteran birdwatcher or a novice, everyone can get a buzz out of birdwatching all you need are binoculars and a good identification guide.”

But, Mr Carter warned would-be birdspotters not to leave home without plenty of water and without informing someone of where they are going and for how long.

“Avoid being out during the hot afternoon,” he said.

“The best time to watch birds is dawn and dusk, which are also conveniently the coolest and most comfortable times of the day for people.”

Heatwave 'kills hundreds' of birds in WA

2009-01-15T11:43:00.002+11:00

Huge flocks of young birds have perished as temperatures soared over 50 degrees in the Western Australian outback, a roadhouse manager says.

Tony Aroldi, at the remote Overlander Roadhouse about 200km south of Carnarvon, in the state's midwest, says the birds began dying during a fierce heatwave last week.

He said dead birds, mainly budgerigars, were everywhere.

And the smell was terrible.

"They are just flying and then the next minute you see they're trying to find a shady place," he said.

"And then what they do is they get right around the corner and they stay there (in the shade), they never come out to eat, they never come out to drink and they're dying.

"They are dying because of the heat.

"We don't worry about the heat but these birds are dead after flying about for about three days, round and round and round - they look for somewhere to stay, they look for the water."

Temperatures at the remote roadhouse hit 52 degrees last week, Mr Aroldi said.

This week it was milder - he reckoned the temperature on Tuesday was about 44 degrees.

Mr Aroldi has contacted the Department of Environment and Conservation seeking help with the cleanup.

Hundreds of fallen birds were underneath his house.

And he said he pulled at least 20 kilograms of dead birds out of a generator outside the roadhouse after they had died there seeking shelter, he said.

He estimated the death toll in the millions.

"We're talking about in the millions not in the hundreds, trust me in the millions," he said.

"I've never seen such a thing like that, you know.

"You can't go near it with the smell."

A neighbour of Mr Aroldi's had told him birds had fallen into a well and had contaminated the water.

Mr Aroldi said water was an issue at the isolated roadhouse and he had to close down toilets and showers after tourists had emptied the water tanks turning on a tap to try to save the birds.

Department of Environment and Conservation district manager Brett Fitzgerald said he had never seen bird deaths in his ten years in the region.

He said it was difficult to estimate how many birds had died, but it was at least 1,000, not millions.

An ideal breeding season had seen bird numbers flourish in the WA wheatbelt, he said.

Budgies are prolific breeders who can nest multiple times during a good season and most of the birds were experiencing their first summer.

"Unfortunately it's the bust that comes at the end of a boom," Mr Fitzgerald said.

"These birds are young birds, juvenile birds and it's their first year, their first real hot summer, they are certainly mobile, they've got to Overlander which is not a budgie breeding area but probably not experienced enough to move to a better area when the heatwave hit last week.

"There are other water sources within the immediate vicinity and mature birds have most likely migrated to areas more suitable."

Making feathered friends: bird basics 101

2008-11-12T13:56:00.003+11:00

Every year, thousands of frustrated people surrender their pet birds to shelters because they lack the knowledge and skills to care for them. Patty Blau, a volunteer with the local bird rescue organization Mickaboo Cockatiel Rescue offers bird parents and anyone considering adding a feathered friend to their family the tools they need to correct undesirable behavior and prevent potential health problems.
"I've always loved birds, but believe that they don't belong in cages, so I never pursued them as 'pets,'" Patty explains. But in early 2004, she got to know her friend's rescued cockatiel. When she did a little research into the rescue situation for birds, she quickly realized the enormous number that are purchased and subsequently surrendered to rescue organizations and shelters due to a lack of understanding about the time, thought and money a rewarding relationship with a bird requires. By the end of the year, she was fostering her first two cockatiels. Patty is now the proud parent to three birds and is currently fostering an additional eight. She also teaches basic bird-care classes throughout the Bay Area.

Here are Patty's top five tips for living with birds:

1. Keep them occupied. Birds are intelligent and develop bad habits when they're frequently left alone in their cages. Devise foraging activities for your birds when you're out of the house and give them plenty of "out" time when you're home.
2. Feed them a widely varied diet. Like us, birds enjoy a variety of foods. Alternate between organic fruits, veggies, grains and a good-quality pellet. Seeds should be minimized to only 15 or 20 percent of their diet.
3. Make sure they get plenty of zzzs. If your bird seems cranky, he may be suffering from lack of sleep. Make sure your he has a quiet place to snooze (perhaps even a smaller "sleep" cage) in a room that's completely dark for at least 10 hours (and preferably 12).
4. Whistle a happy tune. If you've recently adopted a bird or have one that seems frightened of you, try whistling songs or whispering. They have extremely good hearing and will likely listen to you with curiosity and interest and begin viewing you as a companion rather than a threat.
5. Learn your bird's body language! Your bird will send clear signals when he doesn't want to be touched or approached, including (but not limited to) raising various groups of feathers on top of his head, neck or back. By giving your bird space he will learn to trust you and will be more receptive when you approach.

If you are contemplating adopting pet of the avian variety, Gail Ellis, education coordinator for the Marin Humane Society offers this advice for determining if a bird is right for you:

Read everything you can about the bird you want to adopt and talk with a trusted vet.
Even budgies (parakeets) can live very long lives. Assess your ability to commit. Do you have the time, resources and interest?
Most parrots, including budgies and cockatiels, are as smart as a toddler and tend to act like one too. Are you ready for a perpetual two year old in your life?
Parrots are still wild animals. They need exercise and socialization. When you are home your bird should be sharing in your life, not sequestered away in his cage.

Behavior tips for an aggressive parrot

2007-11-16T12:35:00.000+11:00

Between my two parrots, my husband and I have two very opposite personalities to cater to.

Conrad is happy-go-lucky most of the time, but does get angry if things don't go his way. He has never bitten me out of aggression or fear. He is very well-trained and 'steps up' well, poops in his area (most of the time! they don't have bladders - can you blame them?) and has a healthy appetite, usually trying everything I give him.

Andrea on the other hand is quite moody and territorial, but is very calm. She is content to sit and watch you make dinner or do homework (in my case!). She doesn't care for new foods, and will only pig out on her 'favorites' - kiwi, banana, peas, beans, carrots and pasta. She appears to also has a thing against other females.

She has become quite aggressive towards me lately, while behaving well with my husband. The 'attacks' have happened three times and have been unrelated to territory - she was in an open space with no 'caves' to protect. I can only think that she is 'defending' a territory that I didn't realize she owned - like my laptop (the site of 'attack' # 1) - and the living room rug (# 2).

I've had a lot of experience with training aggressive parrots - my most successful case being a pet store cage-aggressive green wing macaw named Oscar. I have the scars to prove how difficult the process was, but, by the time I was done with him, he had turned into a big baby, allowing head scratches and cuddling. He was completely trained on positive reinforcement alone, but was prone to 'realizing' he was sitting on a human hand and biting it...

Perhaps I'm just tired of new scars, but I have been looking for ways to train a parrot that will take me out of the line of fire. Andrea seems to be a common case where she has chosen a favorite human and is wreaking havoc on the unchosen.

Some techniques I have chosen to deal with the Madame's (our pet name...for our resident red bird) focused aggression:

- Leaving the room when she goes into 'aggressive mode.' She will jump into her food dish to defend it, if she is in her cage.

- Overly-praising her for stepping up out of her cage.

- No more shoulder time. No bird should be allowed on shoulders due to dominance issues. (If held higher or level with your head, birds tend to get a 'big head' on their shoulders.) We had grown lax with that rule since it's so easy to just put them there when you're doing something.

- Tempting her with treats when she seems reluctant to be with me.

The last probably isn't the best, but we are making progress. I have not tried picking her up from any of the crime scenes - I don't think we're quite there yet. When she does get to one of those places, I do tend to call my husband to retrieve her, rather than suffering the imminent bite.

I am still looking for more literature on parrot aggression and why they tend to favor one human over the other. From what I've seen online, Eclectus hen owners tend to describe their birds as moody - I'd love to see an article on how an Eclectus owner has overcome this!

Parrots Have Colonized the Wilds of Brooklyn

2006-12-29T19:17:00.000+11:00

NEW YORK -- Alex Joseph, a West Indian-born parks worker, rakes the lawn at the grandly gothic Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn when he and his fellow laborers hear what sounds like a flock of sea gulls dive-bombing at their heads. The workers instinctively duck and whip round and look up and see -- those crazy green parrots, expertly mimicking the sea gull's caw.

"Man, they do that a couple times a week just to play with our minds," Joseph said, grinning wide and shaking his head. "They are a crazy bunch of immigrants, those birds."

They are the wild parrots of Brooklyn, these emerald-feathered yakkers with the wisenheimer sense of humor. Thought to be long-ago escapees from a container at John F. Kennedy International Airport, their ranks replenished by unauthorized releases from pet shops, the parakeets -- originally from Argentina -- have become accomplished city dwellers. There is a parrot colony along the Hudson River cliffs in New Jersey and another bunch that prefers Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. Of late, two arrivistes have taken up residency on an apartment ledge on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

But mostly these are Brooklyn parrots, content in their adopted borough of 2.5 million people.

"They are successful Brooklynites, in that they are adaptable, eat a wide variety of foods and like to talk," says Eleanor Miele, a professor at Brooklyn College who lives in the Park Slope neighborhood and has found herself entranced by the parrots.

New York has many wild critters, and a few are not human. A coyote wandered into Central Park before running afoul of sunbathers, and the hawks Pale Male and Lola established aeries on a gilded stretch of Fifth Avenue. Raccoons know their way around Brooklyn's Prospect Park, and muskrats poke at the mud flats of the Harlem River.

But the parrots -- which are about a foot long and are known as monk parakeets because their gray chests and tufts resemble a monk's skullcap and frock -- are among the city's more cacophonous and unexpected residents. Their cry sounds like metal scraping metal. (San Francisco has parrots-in-residence on Telegraph Hill. And Chicago has a broad-shouldered, loud-squawking crew that has been called "Hells Angels with wings.")

Most Brooklyn parrots live in colonies of 50 or 60 birds, although a few less sociable types live on Coney Island or in Canarsie or Gravesend. They favor homes atop light and transmission poles; at Green-Wood Cemetery they inhabit the soaring gothic spires near the gate. Their nests are vast 400-pound constructs, with foyers and anterooms and a space where the females lay eggs and enjoy a respite from the males.

Con Edison knows these nests well, as periodically the power company's workers clamber around them. "These aren't nests; they're condominiums," a spokesman said.

Half a dozen nests can be seen atop the light poles at the Brooklyn College athletic field. On a recent Saturday, 20 or 30 of the resident parrots swooped down and, amid much screeching, alighted on the branches of an oak tree beside a pre-World War II apartment building. Children inside the apartments gestured and called at the birds; sometimes the parrots talk back. (In captivity, monk parakeets can develop a vocabulary of about 200 words.)

Steve Baldwin, 50, lives in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn and acts as the parrots' pro bono publicist and bard. He has composed a Lou Reed-style song, "The Ballad of the Brooklyn Parrots" (available at BrooklynParrots.com), which mixes human and parrot voices and which one "critic" called "Jim Morrison meets Rick Moranis at the Audubon Society."

"They eat berries, ornamental plants and sometimes pizza," Baldwin said as he gave a tour of the Brooklyn College nests to a dozen birders. "They are very intelligent, and of course they don't like the suburbs."

How the parrots came to Brooklyn is a mystery. Apparently a large crate filled with the parrots broke open at Kennedy International Airport in the late 1960s. Baldwin's voluminous research tends to implicate mafia goodfellas in the deed, although that "fact" might be too delicious to check out. The parrots hung around the Jamaica Bay marshes that girdle JFK's southern edges before moving into Brooklyn. The cold was no problem, as the parrots hailed from temperate-to-chilly Argentina.

At first, state and federal wildlife-control officers tried to wipe out this "invasive species." Hundreds of parrots perished, and in the 1970s, the last large colony relocated to light towers at the Rikers Island jail. An eradication team showed up to finish the job -- but the parrots had disappeared.

"Someone tipped the parrots off," Baldwin says with a shrug. "They circled back to Brooklyn, and everyone left them alone."

Now there is a new threat. Poachers with nets are snatching the parrots and selling them to pet stores. The poachers have all but denuded several neighborhoods. It has parrot-loving denizens of Brooklyn talking about vigilante patrols.

Kay Martin lives somewhere near Coney Island, in a house filled with at least nine varieties of parrots. She acknowledges that their racket awakens her at night. So what? They are friends, and they talk to her. Martin, diminutive and pugnacious, spends most of her spare time safeguarding the wild parrots.

Are there nests near your home? She frowns.

"I'm not saying," she says. "The last thing our parrots need is another reporter poking around."

Wild Parrots find a home in Claremont

2006-12-27T19:29:00.000+11:00

Hundreds of brightly colored wild parrots have been spotted in different areas of Claremont over the past weeks, giving residents a unique opportunity to witness these wild birds living in a naturalized environment. Although the parrots are not native to Southern California, they have made it their home and have been here for several decades.

“Around 9 a.m. on Saturday, I walked out my front door, looked up and saw hundreds of these beautiful birds in the trees,” said Claremont resident Yvonne Cervantes Coleman, who lives on the 1100 block of Mountain Avenue. “They were so loud, I felt like I was in the movie ‘The Birds,’” she said, referring to the classic 1963 Alfred Hitchcock horror film.

Dr. Dan Guthrie, a Claremont Graduate University biology professor and president of the Pomona Valley Audubon Society, explained that for at least a dozen years, more than a thousand of the parrots have permanently settled in Temple City. “It appears that a group of around 300 of the Temple City flock have come over to this area, possibly to find new areas for feeding,” Dr. Guthrie said. “The ones we are seeing here are of the species Red Crowned Amazons, which are native to central and northern Mexico.”

Despite their name, the red crowns are mostly a bright yellowish green color, but have distinguishable blue and red markings around the head. They like to eat persimmons, china-berry, walnuts, pine cone seeds and other fruits and grains. The birds spend their days searching for food, sometimes traveling several miles. Around sunset, they return to their established roosting area where they rest until sunrise.

“These parrots have lifelong mating partners, and if you watch them, you will notice that they will even travel in pairs as they go out and forage for food,” explained Dr. Guthrie. “They don’t have any real natural predators like they do in their native habitat so they breed quite well here. The population appears to be steadily increasing as this group indicates. And they seem to be able to tolerate the cold weather, as long as they have can find plants with berries and fruit.”

According to Tim Tipping, who lives near the corner of Towne Avenue and Amador Street, the birds are loud enough to wake you up, even with the windows closed.

“At around 6:30 a.m. you can hear them,” he said. “I’ve seen them here every morning for about the last week and a half.”

Parrots are native to many regions of the world, with most species found in central and South America, but also in Africa, southeast Asia and Australia. In some places, deforestation has led to dramatic decreases in native parrot populations. Several parrot species are officially listed as endangered species.

Since these birds are not native to southern California, there are a variety of urban legends as to how they came to settle throughout the area. Among the rumors are that an exotic bird smuggling ring was about to be busted by authorities. In order to destroy the evidence of their crimes, the group released the birds into the wild. Another theory describes a passionate group of firefighters who set the birds free to save them from a burning pet store.

According to a website dedicated to the parrots, these birds are the descendents of wild-caught parrots which were imported into the United States many years ago and then either escaped captivity or were intentionally released into the wild.

However they got here, Claremonters seem to be happy about the new arrivals, despite the early morning squawking.

“They’re just so beautiful and it’s amazing to watch them fly around, from tree to tree, said Ms. Coleman. “When they first arrived, a lot of the neighbors were out in the street and we all enjoyed seeing them here.”

Birds of a feather

2006-12-27T19:20:00.000+11:00

Although endangered by loss of habitat in its native Mexico, the green-cheeked Amazon parrot thrives in the comparatively tame outdoors of Palm Beach.

The parrots have adopted as their home the lanky Australian pines along the Pine Walk beside The Breakers, where they can be seen cavorting and squawking at dawn and dusk.

Keith Lovett, director of living collections at the Palm Beach Zoo, said he knows of no other green-cheeked Amazon parrot flock in Palm Beach County.

"It is rare," he said.

Highly evolved and intelligent creatures, the Amazon parrot, like many other species of parrot, has blossomed here because of the warm climate, abundance of food and the lack of a serious threat from predators, Lovett said.

And because of their scrappy attitude.

"Hawks will go after a dove instead," he said. "It's an easier meal."

Some of the non-native palms planted in South Florida originated in the tropics of Central and South America — an ideal arrangement for the parrots that depend upon the trees for their food.

"These birds are opportunists. They eat nuts, seeds and fruits," Lovett said. "There's very little to stop their reproduction once they are established."

Another reason they have prospered in Palm Beach is that they are legally protected by a 1996 town law that forbids the killing, wounding or maiming of any bird, Town Manager Peter Elwell said. The law also protects the birds' eggs and nests.

"The town is a bird sanctuary," Elwell said.

The Amazons are actually one of seven species of parrot that reside in the Pine Walk, Breakers spokeswoman Ann Margo Peart said. Inspired by the "star attraction" of the tree-lined avenue, the resort published its own children's book, Coconut Crew, featuring animated parrot characters that play and frolick among its amenities, she said.

The Pine Walk Australian pines were planted around 1880 to line the old road that led to a casino. The Breakers has kept them pruned to a height of about 70 feet, which reduces the wind load and extends the life of the trees. That is good for the flock of perhaps 100 or more green-cheeked Amazons, which favors the tree because it can easily nest in the hollow trunks, said Paul R. Reillo, a conservation biologist and director of the nonprofit Rare Species Conservatory Foundation in Loxahatchee, which has been monitoring the flock since the early 1990s.

The downside is that, if the trees are ever cut down or lost to a storm, the flock will disperse and almost certainly be lost, he said.

It congregates each year between late January and mid-February to begin mating season. One parrot will use the same nest year after year.

During the rest of the year, the flock is probably in agricultural areas, possibly the orange groves of St. Lucie, Martin and Indian River counties, he said. However, at least some of the flock live in Palm Beach year round.

"I've been seeing them for 30 years, and the numbers keep growing," said Claudine Laabs, a nature photographer and former president of the Audubon Society of the Everglades. "They love to gather on the (utility) wires and are very vocal early in the morning. I guess they discuss where they're going to go for breakfast."

At least some of the quakers, macaws, parakeets, conures, love birds and cockatiels seen flying around Palm Beach County are former pets or, far more often, descendants of pets that either escaped from their owners or were turned loose, Lovett said.

Reillo said, however, that the Palm Beach parrots were established in the 1930s or 1940s before the commercial importation of wild parrots, and are therefore not descended from escaped pets like other small flocks of feral parrots. Most likely the flock derives from a group of birds imported and eventually released by a Palm Beach resident.

They remain in South Florida year-round and stay close enough to return to their nests each evening, Lovett said.

"They definitely didn't arrive here through migration," he said.

As many as 70 kinds of parrot have been identified in Florida, with 20 believed to be breeding, according to the educational web site Florida Environment.com. All are exotic.

There's been little research on the newcomers compared to that performed on native species in general. The state's only native parrot species, the Carolina parakeet, went extinct around 1900.

Timothy Green, a bird lover and former aviculturalist for Walt Disney World who is now a business banker at Citibank on Royal Palm Way, said he was quite surprised to see the Pine Walk Amazons.

"I have not known of anywhere that had such a dense population of Amazon parrots," said Green, who used to lead birdwatching tours in the Peruvian rainforest. "They are distinct. They have an attachment to The Breakers. There is little chance those birds will move on. Once they nest and set up a pattern for feeding, they will keep that pattern for their entire life."

The birds follow a daily mini-migration, departing their roosting area early and flying off to a particular tree that they know is in fruit or seed at that time of year, he said.

Besides their remarkable memory, they possess exceptional vision and hearing. They also are highly social.

"One bird flying overhead and calling out can be heard miles away," he said. "That probably has a lot to do with how they locate one another in the wild. They have a desire to find each other."

Birds that flock can better defend against predators and find mates with whom to breed, he said.

"These birds that don't 'belong' here found a way to survive," Green said. "Talk about real estate: They couldn't ask for a better place to live."

During its breeding season, the green-cheeked Amazon adopts a territorial posture, becoming the only species on the Pine Walk, Reillo said.

To examine the nests, he uses a telescoping video probe with infrared lens and built-in microphone that reaches up to 70 feet off the ground.

After a 28-day incubation period, the birds hatch and then leave the nest in eight to 10 weeks, he said. Typically, the parents will raise two or three to fledging, or departure from the nest.

About 90 percent of the nests fail because of exposure to the elements or predators, including raccoons, starlings and crows, all of which dine on the eggs, Reillo said.

Last year, the Rare Species Conservatory counted 17 active nests. Only seven resulted in chicks, and four were known to have successfully fledged youngsters.

The problem is that there really is no ideal nesting site available. The birds simply have learned to make do.

"This flock must compress its entire breeding population into a nesting area of high-density nesting cavities, right on top of each other," Reillo said. "That is something that doesn't occur in nature."

The green-cheeked Amazon could well go extinct in its native range, yet continue to exist and even thrive in feral groups in non-native areas like Palm Beach, Reillo said.

South Florida has a population of several hundred that dates to the 1930s. Southern California contains by far the largest concentration in the United States; Los Angeles County has at least 10,000. There are also small numbers in Puerto Rico.

It is fitting that the Palm Beach flock has achieved a kind of local celebrity status, because it is in such an unusually glamorous and accessible location.

"This is an opportunity to see exotic wild parrots doing what they do naturally, without having to travel to the tropics and slog through the jungle," Reillo said.

2006-12-23T11:26:00.000+11:00

They may not be partridges and they probably don’t roost in pear trees.

The parrots at the World Parrot Refuge in Coombs, however, are very lucky to have found a roomy place to live out their days — and be a part of the area’s many natural world attractions.

World Parrot Refuge is run by the For the Love of Parrots Refuge Society (FLOPRS), which is led by Wendy and Andy Huntbatch, who moved to the area from the Fraser Valley. A facility was built in Coombs in 2005 for the more than 500 parrots they have taken in.

Many of the exotic birds have been rescued — or adopted — from families who can no longer care for them.

Parrots are long-lived and can require a lot more care and attention than a casual pet owner can afford.

A lover of parrots, Wendy has dedicated herself to their care and to FLOPRS’ cause — to ban the importing of wild-caught exotic birds and to spread the message of the cruelty of keeping wild birds in captivity.

World Parrot Refuge has won many supporters — locally and across the province — and has become a tourist attraction with a strong message to share.

To help their cause or to find out more about World Parrot Refuge and FLOPRS, check out their website at www.worldparrotrefuge.org.

UI, monk parakeets get along uneasily

2006-12-19T22:06:00.000+11:00

A monk parakeet pair sits in a tree near the home of Jim and Julie Cook in West Haven.

Jim and Julie Cook built a platform in West Haven to house displaced parakeets. Connecticut's monk parakeets have recovered from last year's eradication program and have settled into a tense, if nonviolent, relationship with The United Illuminating Co.
The green birds that are native to South America and have colonized Connecticut's coast since the early 1970s are showing at least partial interest in man-made nesting platforms erected over the last year.
And while it seems unlikely that a law to protect the birds — proposed in the General Assembly, where it failed last May — will be revived, the Darien-based Friends of Animals has a lawsuit pending against UI to permanently stop the tactics that slaughtered 179 birds last year.
Two months ago, UI crews tore down 76 nests in utility poles in West Haven, Milford and Stratford.
Unlike last year, there were no U.S. Department of Agriculture personnel working with UI to kill birds on the spot. The parrots immediately went back to building nests in about a third of the utility poles. Most of the parrots, however, built nests in trees, not poles.
There are about 1,500 monk parakeets in the state, officials said.
"They're doing fine," said Julie Cook, of Ocean Avenue in West Haven, who was the first to allow the erection of a nesting platform for parrots left homeless by last year's capture-and-kill program.
The platform has been up for about a year and parrots have come and gone and come back, she said, adding that starlings and sparrows have also found room in the platform, which stands about 12 feet above her sidewalk.
Cook's stretch of Ocean Avenue has nests in trees and utility poles. Those bird colonies are among the region's most aggressive as they reclaim their homes.
Since the October destruction, she said, the birds are re-creating their homes one twig at a time.
"Some of these nests are being rebuilt very fast," said Cook, who a year ago was arrested by local police after a confrontation with USDA crews. The charges were dropped.
Michelle Slowik, who lives with her husband and young son on Crown Street in Stratford's Lordship section, said last week that she's witnessed the same transient occupancy in the nesting platform erected in her backyard last year.
"They are kind of 'on-and-off' birds," Slowik said. "Some days we don't see them at all." After putting up the platform last Christmas Eve, at the end of UI's parrot roundup, it took until April for the birds to begin nesting there. On a side of the platform opposite the birds, a young family of squirrels lived.
"The parrots are always at my birdfeeder," said Slowik, noting they eat apples, bananas, sunflower seeds, corn on the cob and safflower seeds, but don't seem to like bread.
The neighborhood's parrot colonies add a welcome bit of local color.
"I was outside the night they came and killed them," Slowik said. "I think people have an attitude that if it's bothering you, get rid of it or kill it."
Dwight Smith, chairman of the biology department at Southern Connecticut State University, who with his students has studied the parrot colonies for more than a decade, said last week that pairs of parrots that survived last year's fatal roundups re-nested and have had a full reproduction cycle during the summer.
"They're bouncing back," he said. Two of the 14 documented nesting-platform alternatives in southwestern Connecticut have been colonized, he said.
"Other surviving birds that immediately re-nested in trees and power poles were also successful," Smith said. "I can say that if they're left alone, they will recover fully.
"If UI dismantles nests at an appropriate time, neither UI nor animal enthusiasts will have confrontation issues."
He hopes the utility will consider the construction of artificial nesting platforms, "but so far, in four years I've tried to work with UI, no one has contacted me."
Albert Carbone, spokesman for UI, said last week that the utility remains committed to nonlethal remedies.
After crews cleared nests from 76 poles in October, birds renewed construction on 26 of the poles. Carbone said UI does not believe the birds readily take to the manmade nests.
"Monk parakeets are not platform birds," Carbone said. During last year's roundup, more than 100 nests were targeted from West Haven to Fairfield.
"Many of the birds were right at the same place in the immediate days afterwards," Carbone said of the recent nest-clearing effort. "We've been monitoring the nest rebuilds to see how many come back and see how big they grow."
A pretrial conference in state Superior Court is scheduled for April and a trial date set for mid-October of next year in the Friends of Animals case against UI.
"Obviously, with the court case ongoing, UI has acted within the guidelines of the law and will continue to do so," Carbone said. "In prior court conferences we said we have no plans to capture birds."
Priscilla Feral, president of the Friends of Animals, said last week that with the trial so far away and the discovery period of the case just ahead, she believes the utility might have some interest in settling the issue to avoid a public airing of the planning that led to the 2005 killings.
"We've heard that UI is intent on avoiding the kind of public-relations fiasco of last winter," Feral said.
"What we really need to do is go forward with a statutory change in the Legislature to get protection for the parrots as wild birds," Feral said. "I don't think we want to leave it up to UI on whether they'll get clobbered again. There is still keen interest in a remedy and I think it's going to come through the Legislature rather than the goodwill of the utility company that's intent on posturing who won and who lost."
Rep. Richard Roy, D-Milford, co-chairman of the General Assembly's Environment Committee, said last week that as long as the parrots aren't being captured and killed, he doubts there's a chance for another bill to protect the birds.
"I don't know if anything is going to be done this year," Roy said. "I think we will hear from the animal-rights people, but I don't know if we have to do anything at this point as long as UI does not capture them and turn them over to the feds for euthanizing and use for experiments."
In May, the bill to protect the birds died on the House calendar because, Roy said, there wasn't enough support in the Democratic majority. "I think what we did do is raise the consciousness of all involved," he said. "UI took steps to mitigate the large number of deaths of the birds."
He said that if the capture and killings were to resume, then he'd push for a new law. "I'd be more than happy to submit a bill and commit to telling everyone this should stop, but since UI responded with a program that's not killing them, let's see how this program is working," he said.
Roy said UI suffered from bad public relations. "This year, I think they want to avoid the sideshow," he said.
Cook and other bird lovers say that it was years of deferred maintenance that led to UI's controversial solution of 2005. But, she said, there should be a way for bird lovers to enjoy the tropical touch of the squawking flights of parrots and for UI to deliver power to customers.
"As long as they maintain their poles, there should be a balance," Cook said. "By clearing away the nests in November, their young bird can fly away and then they all come back and build fast, because they need shelter for the winter."
"We're very lucky that we can get to enjoy them," Slowik said. Ken Dixon, who covers the Capitol, can be reached at (860) 549-4670.

From the Frying Pan into the Red Mud

2006-11-26T22:10:00.000+11:00

From the Frying Pan into the Red Mud

John Maxwell

The Third Maroon War

We are all Maroons now, whether we know it or not, wherever we are on the face of the Earth, whoever we are, black, white or in-between, male or female, human,as long as we are alive, animal or vegetable,on land or in the sea or the air, our very existence is under attack.

If we want to survive we have to take action. We need to resist the destruction of our own and our planet’s integrity, resist degradation and deformity and protect ourselves from extinction.

We are under siege by a system gone mad, an economic system gone berserk, unaccountable to anyone and responsible to nothing because this system has no rules. It can do anything it wants to anyone, any living organism.

It is destroying oceans, mountains and entire ecosystems, and with giant dams, even slowing the revolution of the Earth. It destroys everything in its way, creating deserts out of fertile land, submerging low-lying lands , poisoning the air we breathe, altering weather systems in unpredictable ways and producing more destructive hurricanes and typhoons,even slowing down the mighty Gulf Stream itself , destroying the ice-cover at the North Pole, breaking up the ice continent of Antarctica into icebergs bigger than Jamaica and threatening life itself everywhere on Earth.

It is a system described by George Soros, one of the world’s richest men, as ‘Gangster Capitalism.”

On the world stage it calls itself ‘Globalisation”. On the local stage, everywhere, its adherents call it “Development”.

In this system, everything and everyone is for sale. Human dignity itself becomes a marketable commodity, affordable to those with enough money to buy themselves a little time

A Father kills his son

In Vietnam forty years ago, the Americans thought they were buying time and safeguarding Progress. The Domino Theory was ascendant, and South East Asia was to be made safe for democracy. This ideal led to the killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of people, some American, some Vietnamese. Here is the story of three Americans:

The son speaks: “The areas around us were heavily defoliated, so defoliated that they looked like burned-out areas, many of them. You know, almost every day that you were in riverboat patrol, you were… being subjected to the Agent Orange factor.”

The father speaks:: “ It is the case that the particular area in Vietnam in which my son's boat operated a great deal of the time was an area that was sprayed upon my recommendation, and in that sense it's particularly ironic that in a sense, if the causal relationship can be established, I have become an instrument of my son's own tragedy.

The son is Elmo Zumwalt III, son of Elmo Zumwalt II, Admiral and Chief of Naval Operations of the USA. Elmo the younger died at 42, destroyed by cancers induced by Agent Orange. His father died 11 years later, aged 79.

While serving as Commander of US naval forces in Vietnam from 1968 to 1970 the elder Zumwalt had ordered the spraying of the defoliant Agent Orange in the Mekong Delta, seeking to deny cover to snipers on the river banks.

The older Zumwalt killed his son; His son’s genes, deformed by Agent Orange, severely damaged his grandson’s nervous system resulting in serious learning disabilities. He is unable to speak for himself.

Hundreds of thousands of south east Asians were also killed and maimed by Agent Orange and many of their children have been born and are now being born dead, disabled or hideously deformed.

Agent Orange is a mixture of two phenoxyl herbicides – 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T). These were developed for agro-industry – factory farming – to control broad-leaved weeds. In broad-leaved plants they induce rapid, uncontrolled growth, eventually killing them. They were used all over the world by the middle of the 1950s. At least one Extension Officer in Jamaica, my friend “Buddha” Webster, was killed by exposure to this toxin.

It was later learned that a dioxin, 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin (TCDD), is produced as a byproduct of the manufacture of 2,4,5-T, and was thus present in any of the herbicides that used it. This chemical is among those now present in the waters of Kingston Harbour, and as I pointed out five years ago, were redistributed in the dredging of the harbour. TCDD is a carcinogen, frequently associated with soft-tissue sarcoma, Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). 2,4,5-T has since been banned for use in the US and many other countries. Its initial effects include liver damage, loss of energy and diminished sex drive.

During the 1970s, at the height of the destabilisation of the Manley government, I saw at Newport East, a big transformer built for JPS dropped onto the quayside, breaking open and spilling into the harbour gallons of dioxins, which remain there to this day.

The Resource Curse

Almost all the countries now described as ’developing’ or ‘underdeveloped’ share one major characteristic: for hundreds of years their people, their lands – their resources have provided the raw materials for the development of the so-called ‘developed world’.

As one American comic has said: “What is our oil doing underneath Iraq and Venezuela?”

Almost every war ever fought and most of todays wars and civil wars derive from the idea that the strong are entitled to the resources of the weak because the weak don’t know how to use their resources appropriately. In this perspective, Jamaican farmland is not serving its proper purpose by producing food. Jamaican bauxite is necessary for “Progress” – to make more planes, more frying pans, more garbage and to stiffen the GDP

In Rio de Janeiro, fourteen years ago, political leaders and bureaucrats from all over the world (including P.J. Patterson) met to agree on a new compact to define development or ‘progress’ if you will. They signed the Treaty of Rio, otherwise known as Agenda 21 and it committed the nations of the world to work together to assure the survival of the planet and all the living things which inhabit it by adopting and practicing Sustainable Development.

The first paragraph of the preamble of the treaty is worth remembering:

“Humanity stands at a defining moment in history. We are confronted with a perpetuation of disparities between and within nations, a worsening of poverty, hunger, ill health and illiteracy, and the continuing deterioration of the ecosystems on which we depend for our well-being.”

Environmentalists put it more crudely: We are living beyond our means, overdrawing our credit from the earth, destroying finite resources for greed.

The oil industry is only now waking up to the prospect that its behaviour may condemn all of us to a future of darkness, disease and destitution; only now beginning to recognise that there is am imminent threat of catastrophic changes because of global warming. Even Mr Bush and Mr Howard of Australia seem to be seeing the light. The Chinese seem to have some way to go before they emerge from their tunnel of development.

In the Rio statement on Sustainable Development, the world’s leaders acknowledged “ the integral and interdependent nature of the Earth, our home” and proclaimed as the first principle of development that:

“ Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development.

They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.”

The Predator’s Progress

Progress is today defined by measuring how much of one’s patrimony can be safely delivered into the hands of developers. We offer them incentives to come to despoil our patrimony, abuse and deform our social relations and generally disinherit us. In gracious exchange they will make billions of tax free dollars and demonstrate how different they are to the rest of the miserable and oppressed of the earth. In return we can live in the Bronx.

All over the world indigenous populations are counselled to be investor friendly, to assist the despoliation of their holy mountains in Chile; the poisoning of their streams and the deforestation of their landscapes in New Guinea; the displacement, murder and rape of thousands to make way for oil pipelines in Burma(Myanmar). The Progress-bringers are destroying the glaciers of Iceland, the Jarrah forests of Western Australia and the communal tranquility of the Cedros pensinsula in Trinidad.

The 2005 Yale/Columbia Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) showed Trinidad and Tobago as having the worst percentage of negative land impacts of 146 countries, yet Trinidad's government is ignoring the protests of its people who don’t want any more pollution and degradation of their small and beautiful island.

Public protests in Chile, Brazil and Vietnam have kept proposed Aluminum smelters out of those countries The Trinidadian citizens group Cedros Peninsula United say that when they managed to obtain a copy of Alcoa's (secret) Environmental Clearance – jointly signed by Alcoa and the government's Energy Corporation they found it full of omissions, inaccuracies and outright false statements.

The Barrick Corporation of Canada, like Alcoa, a transnational despoiler of the environment is proposing to mine 500 tonnes of gold from mountain peaks in Chile. The Barrick corporation intends (Listen to This!) to relocate three glaciers (rivers of ice) to get at the gold.

As you might imagine, the people of Chile are not accepting this proposed rape of their environment.

Environmental Time-Bombs

The proposed assault on the Cockpit Country is not simply an assault on the sensibilities of a few environmentalists. It is an affront to the whole of humanity. When the great devastation comes we won’t be saved by bauxite or alumina, but by the species finding shelter in the land of Look Behind and similar refuges around the world.

A hundred years ago Jules Verne described the Gulf Stream as " the sea's greatest river,[and] we must pray that this steadiness continues because ... if its speed and direction were to change, the climates of Europe would undergo disturbances whose consequences are incalculable."

The Sea’s Greatest River is slowing down, and the consequences have been calculated

A few weeks ago the British government published a report by Sir Nicholas Stern on the economic consequences of climate change. The report says The possibility of avoiding a global catastrophe is "already almost out of reach",

Stern says changes in weather patterns could drive down the output of the world's economies by up to £6 trillion a year by 2050, an amount equivalent to almost the entire output of the EU. This catastrophic prospect is the direct result of “Progress” as defined by people who have more money than conscience.

If the Gulf Stream slows to a stop or even if it simply continues to slow down, the effects on climate, farming and the populations of the world will be in one word, Disaster.

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize Economist of 2001, former Chief Economist of the World Bank says:

“The Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change … makes clear that the question is not whether we can afford to act, but whether we can afford not to act. [The report] provides a comprehensive agenda—one which is economically and politically feasible — behind which the entire world can unite in addressing this most important threat to our future well being.”

Neither Stern nor Stiglitz nor Soros is some wool-gathering tree-hugger. They are among the people recognised as the brightest in the world. I prefer to believe them rather than some PR flack from any aluminium company or the Port Authority or any other agency of the Jamaican government.

The Spanish hotels on the North coast are disasters in their own right and will soon become catastrophic losses because of sea level rise and hurricanes. And we will pay for them as we will pay for the Doomsday Highway which is already obsolete.

As I pointed out in my column, “People at Risk” in February 2002, some of the geniuses of the Jamaican “development” process tolerate no opposition to “Progress”. They will destroy our coral reefs and degrade the harbour to take bigger container ships – themselves extinct within twenty years. At that time I reported that the bottom of Kingston Harbour contained several extremely dangerous substances and warned that PAJ dredging would redistribute them unpredictably and in a manner which would almost certainly be hazardous to health particularly to the people of Portmore I reported that among toxins present were: Arsenic, Cadmium, Dioxins (including derivatives of Agent Orange), Lead, Lindane, Hexachlorobenzene, Tetrachloroethylene and good, old Mad Hatter’s Mercury.

“Progress” has brought civil war, genocide and HIV/AIDS to Africa. It has deformed our politics, driven away our best and brightest all in search of the Holy Grail of ‘Development”,

We can eat Trelawny yam and gungoo peas. We can’t eat Red Mud, although we may have to drink it, if progress has its way with the Land of Look Behind.

Prosit !

Big, smart birds have big needs

2006-11-19T15:54:00.000+11:00

AS EVERY PARENT knows, toddlers can be a handful. They need constant supervision as their curiosity can lead them into harm's way and constant stimulation as their minds develop and change daily. Many parrot species possess intelligence on a par with a 3-year-old.
If having a precocious toddler for the rest of your life sounds good to you, you might want to consider adding a parrot to your family.

A better understanding of parrots will help ensure that your parrot has a stimulating, healthy life. Learn as much as possible before bringing a parrot home - even one as small as a budgie. Small parrots pack the personality of a much larger spirit into their tiny bodies.

Although importation of wild parrots has been banned in the U.S. for years, captive-bred parrots are not born domesticated like cats and dogs. Parrots are born with wild instincts and must learn how to trust humans and to live in our environment. Parrots respond best to positive reinforcement, not punishment, and they are a prey species, so they are easily frightened by new things and by changes in their environment. Knowing this will help you understand what might seem to be strange or unreasonable behavior.

Diet and enrichment are critical. Contrary to what many people believe about birds, parrots cannot live on seeds alone, even if labeled "fortified." They need a varied diet of vegetables, fruits, formulated pellets, healthful cooked foods and a small amount of seeds and nuts. Some foods are deadly to a parrot - notably avocados, caffeine, alcohol and chocolate - and parrots can die quickly from fumes given off by overheated, nonstick cookware. These birds need a yearly exam by an avian vet, and avian medicine is usually more costly then vet care for domestic pets.
Because of their intelligence and curiosity, parrots need enrichment. Your parrot's cage should be safe and stimulating with lots of appropriate toys and time spent with you outside of the cage every day. It needs to be in a cage when you are away, so get the biggest cage you can afford - wider is better than taller - to give the bird, at minimum, enough room to spread its wings. Its tail should not touch the bottom.

Parrots are flock animals and you will be their flock. Neglecting a parrot, forcing it to live in solitary confinement is the cruelest thing you can do.

Parrots are not for everyone, but for those willing to invest time and love, they are wonderful companions. Small parrots, such as budgerigars (parakeets) can live 15 years, cockatiels 30 years, and larger parrot species can live to their 60s and beyond and may outlive you.
Deacon, a 25-year-old yellow-nape Amazon parrot, was surrendered to the Marin Humane Society after his guardian died. Deacon, who has been known to carry on a conversation with himself in both male and female human voices, not only lost his beloved companion, he also lost his home.

Consider your parrot when planning your estate and put your wishes in writing. Some attorneys specialize in helping families make these important plans. Being a responsible parrot guardian means planning for your bird's well-being after you are gone.

Finally, pet stores are the worst place to purchase parrots. Parrots have been bred in excess, and rescue groups are overwhelmed with unwanted parrots that need homes. Buying in stores perpetuates this problem. The best way to find a parrot companion is through a reputable parrot rescue, like Mickaboo Companion Parrot Rescue - www.mickaboo.org. You may be giving a bird like Deacon a second chance.

This Thanksgiving, remember to give thanks for all your pets, be they feathered or furry.

In pictures: Parrots of the Caribbean auditions

2006-11-17T20:00:00.000+11:00

Newsround's Adam went along to see parrots audition to be the official spokes-bird for the DVD of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

The plucky parrot who wins will get to visit shops and meet fans as part of a promotional tour

The winning bird must have a good personality as it will have to do interviews with the media!

Now that's what we call a squawk-on part!

Loads of parrots and their owners turned up. The birds had to be able to learn lines and behave well. This parrot called Sweetheart came along to try out with her owner Vicky Hammond.

This blue and yellow macaw, called Gismo Baggins, showed off his driving skills - not so sure that'll get you the part Gismo!

Maxwell the macaw came along with his owner Jo Brady, who even dressed up for the event!

Budgerigars and Cockatiels

2006-11-17T19:56:00.000+11:00

First brought to Europe from Australia by John Gould, the notable British ornithologist and artist, the Budgerigar has become the world’s favourite cage bird.

They are found wild only in Australia, where flocks running into thousands may be seen, but there are almost certainly now more domestic birds than wild ones.

Wild birds are mainly bright green with black and yellow patterns on head, nape and wing coverts. The tail is a greenish blue and there are touches of a brighter blue on the face. Intensive selective breeding has produced birds of many colours, most common being blues, yellows, greys and whites.

Gould called them Warbling Grass Parakeets but their common English name comes from the Australian Aborigines who dubbed them ‘Betcherrygah’, which is a rendering of their calls.

Apart from the beautiful colours which have been developed, their appeal lies in a vivacious manner and the ability to imitate sounds including the human voice (though not in the same league as the Grey Parrot or Hill Mynah).

Opposites do not attract

2006-11-15T22:46:00.000+11:00

A study of budgerigar behavioural patterns has proved the old adage ‘opposites attract’ wrong.

University of California, Irvine, researchers found that the female budgie prefers a mate that sounds like her. Biologists Marin Moravec, Professor Nancy Burley and Professor Georg Striedter also observed that the males who paired with more similar sounding females gave more help when they were nesting. The small Australian parrots, which are commonly kept as pets, have a vastly wide range of contact calls. Earlier research has shown that the male of the species spontaneously imitates the calls of females that are possible mates. Additionally, females demonstrated that they prefer males that had been trained to produce calls similar to their own.

In the current study, female budgies preferred to pair with males that sounded like them at first meeting, before any imitation occurred.

The unusual characteristics of the budgie

Parrots display a rare gift, uncommon to other animals, of learning new imitations throughout their lifetime. Budgies are monogamous, highly social and are likely to use multiple aspects of vocalisations when choosing mates and maintaining long-term relationships. The new study has been important to our understanding of the social functions of vocal learning, the scientists said. It also provides an interesting avian example of a familiar mate choice strategy: choosing a mate with whom you have something in common.

I had to ask my mum and dad to budgie-sit

2006-11-14T16:14:00.001+11:00

YOU may have heard of pampered pouches, or even cosseted canaries but the lady of one Suffolk house is besotted with budgerigars! ANDY ABBOTT reports.

FATHER and son Steve and Guy Rodwell, have been well down the pecking order in their Suffolk home.

Besotted over budgies: Karen Rodwell from Bury St Edmunds with her fifteen year old budgerigars Snowy and Joey who put her husband Steve and son Guy, 8, well down the pecking order.

Steve's wife Karen inherited a pair of budgie brothers Snowy and Joey, after they appeared in a friend's aviary as the result of a naughty liaison. The budgies have now celebrated their fifteenth birthday, and it's all down to Karen's care and attention - which Steve jokes definitely makes him the underdog in the house.

Life is certainly a trill a minute as Karen, 47 makes sure “her boys” have the best.
Snowy and Joey
While Steve, 54 and eight-year-old Guy eat food from the supermarkets, the budgies get only the best. Up before the beak is daily fresh veg - the favourite being mange tout (always raw and has to be from Africa), succulent grapes (must be seedless), parsley (must be flat leafed), and mineral water, “obviously my husband has his out of a tap!!”

The budgie brothers only eat Trill, and on their birthday and Christmas always get a treat of millet and wrapped presents.

And it is not only food and drink the birds get that Steve is envious of, they have the best living conditions with lights on a timed dimmer for them, radio on for background music, their own radiator spot to keep them nice and warm in winter, and the television to keep them interested. Their favourite programmes are anything showing football, motorsport and Channel Four racing.

Steve bemoans his lot: “Sometimes when they get tired and want to roost, they go berserk so we have to turn down the lights and adjourn to the kitchen for the evening”.

The couple from Gilstrap Road, Bury St Edmunds, have been married for nine years and the budgerigars have been part of their life from day one.

Steve met Karen at her home in Sudbury for their first date, and he thought she had younger brothers and sisters because her parents arrived to “baby sit.”

Karen said: “I had this hot date but had to get mum and dad round to budgie sit because I had been at work all day and they just had to have their fly around”.

More recently, even a special 50th birthday treat for Steve with a trip to Paris meant a visit to a specialist bird market where they stocked up on fresh bird food, that could only be obtained dried at home.

And Karen thinks her TLC has made her boys two of the oldest budgies in the country.

“They normally only live five or six years, although I read recently there was one that was 17 but that was a single bird living on its own. To have a pair and brothers must be very unusual.

“They are wonderful pets, they used to fly around a lot but not now they are older. Joey has got gout so I bought them a new bigger cage so they could get their exercise flying from perch to perch - I told Steve my dad bought it because he might have been angry I spent all that money on them.

“At the end of the day if you have a pet you should look after it well and that is all I am doing,”

Deep down Steve even has a soft spot for the family's feathered friends. Karen reveals she found him crying over his cornflakes one morning after he found Snowy was ill.

He said: “The missus thinks the world of those birds, I dread to think what will happen if I come downstairs one morning and one is flat on its back with his legs in the air.

“I'll have to sneak out and get a stuffed one and stick it on the perch. If she looks after me like she looks after those budgies I will live to 130!”

I had to ask my mum and dad to budgie-sit

2006-11-14T16:14:00.000+11:00

Cuban Biosphere Shelters Parrots

2006-10-25T16:08:00.000+10:00

A victim of human predation, a native Cuban parrot has found shelter at Guanahacabibes Peninsula, Pinar del Rio Province.

Parrots are easy to tame and delight breeders for they imitate human voices, are cheerful and smart.

They can transmit joy by repeated whistles, but also anger and fear by flapping wings repeatedly along with screeches.

The colorful 12.99 inch bird chooses as its natural nesting sites palm and pine trees and mangroves, preferably near fruit plantations.

Green color prevails but the skin around the eyes and forehead are white, while cheeks and throat have some red that at times extend to the stomach.

Education of local residents and other conservationist actions are directed to help the "talking bird" friend of humans multiply.

Rainforest Birds Keep Dying Out Long After Logging Stops

2006-10-25T15:52:00.000+10:00

Fragmented rainforests can keep losing biodiversity for a century, according to new research in the October issue of Conservation Biology. While the bad news is that many more species are likely to go extinct, the good news is that we can save them if we act now.

"There is no room for complacency," says Thomas Brooks of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, who did the study with Stuart Pimm of Columbia University in New York City and Joseph Oyugi of the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi.

Brooks and his colleagues studied the extinction of bird species in five fragments of Kakamega Forest, Kenya's only rainforest. The researchers determined the rate of bird extinction based in part on how long the fragment has been isolated and on the number of bird extinctions during that time. To check their method, they showed that it accurately accounts for the number of species that have been lost in eastern North America, where deforestation peaked 150 years ago.

Brooks and his colleagues found that within 50 years of isolation, 2,500-acre fragments of Kakamega Forest lose half the bird species likely to go extinct. They concluded that it will take about a century for fragmented tropical rainforests to lose all the bird species that will ultimately die out.

"Our results provide both encouragement and warning," say Brooks and his colleagues.
The warning is that without action, half of the world's 360 threatened forest bird species will be extinct in about 50 years. The encouraging conclusion is that because the most-recently isolated fragments probably still have most of their species, conserving these fragments will mean saving the greatest number of species.

Birds Going Extinct Faster Due To Human Activities

2006-10-25T15:46:00.000+10:00

Human activities have caused some 500 bird species worldwide to go extinct over the past five millennia, and 21st-century extinction rates likely will accelerate to approximately 10 additional species per year unless societies take action to reverse the trend, according to a new report.
Without the influence of humans, the expected extinction rate for birds would be roughly one species per century, according to Stuart Pimm, professor of conservation ecology at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment

Brazil's rare grey-winged continga is among
bird species in danger of extinction.
and Earth Sciences, who is one of the report's principal authors.
"What our study does, for the first time, is provide a well-justified and careful estimate of how much faster bird species are going extinct now than they did before humans began altering their environments," said Pimm, whose research group pioneered the approach of estimating extinction rates on a per-year basis.
"Extinction rates for birds are hugely important, because people really care about birds," he said. "People enjoy them, and bird watching is a big industry. So we know the rates of bird extinctions better than the rates for other groups of species."
"Habitat destruction, selective hunting, invasive alien species and global warming are all affecting natural populations of plants and animals adversely," added Peter Raven, president of the Missouri Botanical Garden, who is co-principal author of the report and a longtime collaborator with Pimm.
The report will appear in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of July 3-7, 2006. Other authors are Alan Peterson, a physician in Walla Walla, Wash., and Paul Ehrlich and Cagan Sekercioglu, conservation biologists at Stanford University.
The researchers calculated that since 1500 -- the beginning of the major period when Europeans began exploring and colonizing large areas of the globe -- birds have been going extinct at a rate of about one species per year, or 100 times faster than the natural rate.
And the rate has been faster in recent times. "Increasing human impacts accelerated the rate of extinction in the 20th century over that in the 19th," the report said. "The predominant cause of species loss is habitat destruction."
These findings do not mean Europeans have caused all of the extinctions of birds over the course of time, the researchers said. "Europe's exploration of the rest of the world merely continued to extinguish species at rates similar to those caused by the earlier Polynesian expansion across the Pacific," they said in the report.
The new assessment considerably exceeds previous scientific estimates that 154 bird types disappeared during that past 500 years, according to the researchers.
One factor contributing to such large differences in estimates is that "more than half of the known species of birds were not discovered until after 1850, an important point that previous estimates of extinction rates have failed to take into account," Raven said. "One can't register a bird as extinct if it was not known to exist in the first place."
According to Pimm, as recently as 1815 scientists were aware of only about 5 percent of the world's birds. "The reality is that scientists did not know about most remaining bird species until about 1845 or 1850," he said.
The new report is not all bleak, Pimm said. "The good news in this report is that conservation efforts are reducing extinction rates to about one bird species every three or four years," he said, but he added that even this improved rate "is still unacceptable."
Of the 9,775 known species of birds, "an estimated additional 25 would have gone extinct during the past 30 years if it were not for human intervention," Raven said.
Despite conservation efforts, "some 1,200 more species are likely to disappear during the 21st century," he warned. "An equal number are so rare that they will need special protection or likely will go extinct, too."
The forecast may be even bleaker for other types of animals, the researchers said.
"We do not give the kind of special attention to other groups of organisms that we do to birds, and extinction rates for them are likely to be much higher over the 21st century and beyond," Raven said.
The researchers derived their estimates using a large database of threatened and endangered species compiled by Bird Life International in Cambridge, England. They also used a compilation by report co-author Alan Peterson of the first scientific descriptions of bird species.
"Knowing when species were first described to science turned out to be a hugely important part of this story," Pimm said.

Polly Wants A Cracker - Maybe A Big Mac, Too

2006-10-25T15:38:00.000+10:00

A parrot is a bird belonging to the family Psittacidae.

Parrots have a characteristic curved beak shape with the upper mandible having slight mobility in the joint with the skull and a generally erect stance. All parrots are zygodactyl, having the four toes on each foot placed two at the front and two back. Along with the cockatoo family Cacatuidae, the parrot family makes up the order Psittaciformes. The term "parrot" can be used in either the narrow sense of the parrot family Psittacidae or the broad sense of the order Psittaciformes.

Birds of the parrot family can be found in most of the warm parts of the world, including India, southeast Asia and west Africa, with one species, now extinct, in the United States (the Carolina Parakeet). By far the greatest number of parrot species, however, come from Australasia, South America and Central America.

Many species can imitate human speech or other sounds, and at least one researcher, Irene Pepperberg, has made controversial claims for the learning ability of one species; an African Grey Parrot named Alex has been trained to use words to identify objects, describe them, count them, and even answer complex questions such as "How many red squares?" (with over 80% accuracy). Other scholars claim that parrots are only repeating words with no idea of their meanings and point to Pepperberg's results as being nothing but an expression of operant conditioning.

Parrots are kept as pets, particularly conures, macaws, amazons, cockatoos, cockatiels, and budgerigars (also known as parakeets). Often the wings of such birds are clipped, but many people keep flighted pet parrots. Some parrots species have very long life-spans of up to 80 years. In 2004, Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper carried the story of a female macaw supposedly born in 1899, and subsequently a pet of Winston Churchill during the World War; the aged parrot, called Charlie, was reputed to curse the Nazis and Adolf Hitler. [1] Subsequent research strongly suggested that the parrot had never belonged to Winston Churchill, [2] [3] although Charlie's great age was not in question.
The attractiveness of parrots as pets has led to a thriving - often illegal - trade in the birds, and some species are now threatened with extinction. The scale of the problem can be appreciated in the Tony Silva case of 1996, in which a world-renowned parrot expert and former director at Tenerife's Loro Parque (Europe's largest parrot park) was jailed in the US for 82 months and fined 0,000 for smuggling the birds 1. The case rocked conservationist and ornithological circles, leading to calls for greater protection and control over trade in the birds.

Escaped parrots can represent a threat to local ecosystems if they become established in the wild. This is now occurring in Spain, in Barcelona and Tenerife. Several species, including Red-lored Parrots (Amazona autumnalis), Lilac-crowned Parrots (Amazona finschi), and Yellow-chevroned Parakeets (Brotogeris chiriri), have become well established in Southern California. A sizeable population of feral Indian Ring-necked Parakeets (Psittacula krameri) exists in and around London, England, thought to have descended from escaped or released pets. The largest roost of these is thought to be in Esher, Surrey, numbering several thousand. There are also feral Monk Parakeets in Hyde Park, on the south side of Chicago, USA. [4]

Macaws face possible extinction

2006-10-25T15:34:00.000+10:00

A U.S. bird expert says one of the world's most colorful birds -- the macaw, the largest member of the parrot family -- is in danger of becoming extinct.

The number of macaws has been declining during recent decades and Don Brightsmith at Texas A&M University's Schubot Exotic Bird Center is studying ways to make sure macaws will not become just photographs in a book one day.

Brightsmith says there are 17 species of macaws, and of those, one is extinct, another has become extinct in the wild and seven other species are endangered.

There are several reasons for their declining numbers. The birds are highly prized by the pet trade industry and they are losing their native habitat due to construction and other factors. Also, some South American natives kill them either for food or for their bright feathers.
But little is known about macaws, except that they are highly intelligent creatures and can live up to 50 years.

Macaws can also be affectionate birds.

"It's believed they are very sensitive to human emotions," he added. "The more we learn about these birds, the better our chances to save them."

Budgie show displays the best of genetic engineering

2006-10-23T21:18:00.000+10:00

You can hear the birds from out on the street long before you pull into Bill Mitton's driveway.

Theirs is a riotous sound disorderly, unruly and unrestrained.

At the same time it is a sound that reminds one of life itself of a time in our distant past when we were not the dominant force in our environment. It is a primordial screech.

As you pull up the drive you begin to realize that the screech you hear is coming from a detached cinder block building just across the driveway from Mitton's house.

And unless you have any idea what Mitton's passion is, you would not know that the screech is the joyous sound of 100 budgerigars a colorful tropical bird, indigenous to Australia and New Zealand.

The budgies, as they are commonly known, bear little resemblance to their distant relatives. According to Mitton, they have become "English parakeets."

Except perhaps for their cacophonous screech.

In the wild they are green in color. But a peek inside of Mitton's cinder block aviary would leave one wondering just how this formerly tropical green bird evolved into an "English parakeet" that now sports no less that 23 color variations.I

t is actually a lesson in genetics. And in a sense, an act of love.

Mitton is a member of the Budgerigar Association of America, one of several worldwide organizations that breed, show and, in a word, appreciate budgies.

Today, Saturday, and Sunday, Mitton and his fellow members of the club will hold their Grand National Budgerigar Show in the gymnasium at the Camp Verde Community Center.

Having the event in Camp Verde is no small accomplishment. The last three years it has been in Atlanta, Dallas and Las Vegas.

It's a big deal for the town and a testimony to Mitton and his partner Darvin Jenner's stature in the community of budgie aficionados.

Mitton has been raising budgies since he was a kid. He got out of it for a brief period in his life, but eventually returned after helping his daughter raise some budgies as pets.

Over time he has become one of the nation's top breeders with several birds placing in the national championships.

"The truth is, I love the competition," Mitton said. "That's what motivates me.

"No surprise, considering Mitton spent over 30 years as a high school football coach in Phoenix until retiring to Camp Verde this last year.

The secret to his success, at least with the birds, is a simple matter of knowing what will happen when birds of a feather get together.

"The whole process of breeding good birds is a lesson in genetics. You learn which genes are dominant, which ones are recessive, and how to calculate the odds," Mitton said.

The results of those calculations are what you see in Mitton's aviary. Shades of blue, yellow, green and brown abound in his gender specific cages as do variations in eye color, body size and temperament.

"There is a computer program on the market to help you keep track of the breeding process and help predict the outcome. But the bottom line is, you have to know your birds," Mitton said.

His ability to recognized each of his 100 or so birds and relate each one's lineage is testimony to that knowledge.

On Saturday, from around 9:30 a.m. to about 4 p.m. all of their colors, including lutino, harlequin, spangle, pied and lace wing, will be on display as some 400 budgies and about 100 breeders compete to see which bird is the National Grand Champion.

It will be an extravaganza of both sight and sound, in which you will be treated to their joyous screech, the one truly original characteristic that connects them to their antipodean ancestors and their distant cousins.

Cage bird society celebrates centenary

2006-10-13T16:25:00.000+10:00

Club president Peter Pennycook

Established in 1906, Loanhead and District Cage Bird Society has fought against dwindling interest in this dedicated past-time and is still going strong.

On Saturday, society members are expecting around 800 entries from across Scotland and the north of England to attend its 99th show. The popular show will take place in St Margaret's Church Hall, Clerk Street, Loanhead, from1.30pm to 4pm.

To mark the society's milestone, every exhibitor is to be presented with a specially-engraved pen and certificate. Additional medals will also be awarded to champions and novices at the show, which normally attracts around 600 entries.

A special invitation to attend has been sent to the society's oldest member, 92-year-old Robert Pentland, who lives in Gilmerton. Mr Pentland, who won the British Cup in 1951 with a first class goldfinch cock, keeps British birds, mules, hybrids and new colour canaries.

Judges at this year's show include Mr R Purdie (Norwich, Fife Fancies, British, Mule and hybrid), Mr D Anderson (Borders), Mr P Fleming (Glosters, Yorkshire and any other canary variety), Mr B Meichan (new colours), Mr D Lumsden (Fife Fancies), Mr R Rae (foreign) and Mr D Burnett (budgerigars).

The Loanhead show is the second biggest in the Lothians behind the Linlithgow show. The Scottish National Show in January remains the top attraction in the cage bird calendar.

This year there will be better prizes than normal this year thanks to the support from many of the specialist clubs. The Scottish Norwich Plainhead Club has donated prize money and the Fife Fancy Canary Club is to present 17 rosettes.Research carried out by society members, scanning the pages of the Midlothian Journal, revealed that the newly-formed Loanhead Cage Bird Society held its first show in October, 1907.

More than 200 birds were exhibited with the main prize-winners being Mr A Thomson and Mr J Thomson of Newtongrange, who were awarded the medal for the most points received.
The sterling efforts of the society, which continued to hold its annual show throughout World War One, were recognised in its early years by the town's then Provost Hugh Kerr, who remarked: "A man who has a hobby is a much better man as a rule than a man who has none."
President Peter Pennycook (70) has been a member of the society for more than 30 years and took over the presidency from Jimmy Lowe 10 years ago.

A resident of Moorfoot View, Bilston, Mr Pennycook first became interested in cage birds as a young boy. "I was a lad, just about eight or nine. My dad and I started with pigeons. I was a pigeon man first but when my dad died I put the pigeons away and started with budgies.
"I carried on from there getting more and more and the number just got bigger and bigger. In fact, I am having to make more cages as I have bred that many beautiful young ones," said a proud Mr Pennycook, who specialises in foreign birds including lovebirds and cockatiels.
With a host of rosettes to his name, Mr Pennycook, a former miner, won the Scottish National twice in 1993 with a barraband parrakeet and in 1997 with a crimson winged parrot.

"When I first started birds, there were 20 to 30 clubs in Scotland. Now you are lucky if there are half a dozen."If it wasn't for secretary Douglas Munro, member Dave White and I, there would be no club. I think there is determination in a few people left, who would like to see the club carry on."

Mr Pennycook, who retired as a kitchen fitter, admitted it was becoming increasingly difficult to attract new members."Young people have got computers, PlayStations and all that now. They are not interested," said the president, a member of the Lovebird 1990 Society, the Cockatiel Club, the Parrot Society, the Scottish Foreign Bird Society, the Java Sparrow Club and the Strathclyde Foreign Bird Society.

Brothers preserve garden oasis

2006-10-08T21:43:00.000+10:00

One of the five dams on the property provides water and scenic views
views

GREENTHUMBS Harry and Noela Duncanson couldn't bear the thought of a
developer bulldozing their botanic garden and nursery business when they put it up for sale early this year.

Harry and Noela Duncanson with one of the new owners of Burnside, Mick Lohman.

The pair had spent the past 23 years turning the 5ha property at Nambour, in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, into a nature lovers' oasis. "To see that cleared for houses would have been really sad," 68-year-old Harry said.

Happily for the Duncansons, the new owners shared their vision for the future of Burnside Gardens, which encompasses Nambour Nursery.

Brothers Mick, 45, and Paul Lohman, 38, who live in nearby Kiamba and Mapleton, are opening the garden to visitors next weekend through Australia's Open Garden Scheme.

"What Harry and Noela (63) have created is a legacy that should be open to the community – not turned into brick veneer," Mick said.

The property, on the fertile slopes of the Blackall Range, changed hands in August. The Lohman brothers, who had no horticultural experience, knew they would be up to their armpits in flowers and fertiliser.

"We were a bit overwhelmed and stunned at first," Mick said.
"They have many years of hard work and knowledge between them so we are doing some crash-course learning."

The Duncansons, avid collectors, will live on at the gardens for six months to teach Mick and Paul all they can about the grounds.

And the Lohmans had better pull on their gardening gloves because there's something to learn in every corner of the undulating grounds.

In the south-facing front garden, a rich tapestry of colour, shape and textures covers 4000sq m.

Harry, who wants to start a new garden at nearby Woombye on 2000sq m while he still has the energy, says he'll miss Burnside's 30 varieties of conifers.

"There are ground covers and pyramid shapes and conifers with a gold, purple or silver look – and they look nice grouped," he said.

Bird of paradise, purple passion (like wisteria), hippeastrums and bougainvillea provide brilliant colour to contrast with foliage plants such as grass trees, ferns and tricolour groundcover.

Standing guard over these hundreds of specimens is a mature red cedar, whose leaves make perfect mulch.

"We planted that before the house was here and we grow all the shade-loving plants underneath it," said Harry, who played host to 1400 visitors when Burnside last opened to the public.

Other mature trees include an endangered bottle tree prized for its unique shape and a Leichhardt tree – home to two possums.

Birds, such as lorikeets and king parrots, are attracted to the native garden on the east side of the home that features grevillias.

Perhaps the rarest specimen of the collection is the amherstia nobilis. The Burmese tree hasn't yet flowered (it can take 10 years to do so), but it will be spectacular when it does, bright crimson flowers hanging from a long flower stalk.

"It needs to be among a forest of trees," Harry said.

A fine selection of tropical plants is showcased in the north-facing back garden. Yellow Fraser Island vine, golden chain tree, and yellow saraca, to name a few.
A brilliant jade vine grows up a trellis. "The flowers are so unusual, nature's wonderful the way it has combined the mauves and blues," Harry said.

"The only thing is they like their roots to be cool with plenty of light for the flowers."

Harry has planted a brownea grandicep that flowers from August to October. "It's beautiful – it has these huge clusters of orange flowers."

Water for the informal gardens comes from five dams surrounded by more plantings.

"There's very little that needs to be done to maintain the gardens once they get to maturity," Harry said.
"The density of its plants keeps out the weeds."

• Burnside Gardens, 171 Burnside Rd, Nambour, opens to visitors October 14 and 15.

Water worries Steve on his way to Kew gardens

2006-10-08T21:37:00.000+10:00

UWA plant conservation biology professor Steve Hopper warned this week that drawing water from Yarragadee would be a big mistake.

Dr Hopper was head-hunted for the job of running the Royal Botanical Gardens in London, a post he will take up when he leaves this Sunday.

A strong advocate for conservation, Dr Hopper's dedication to preserving natural heritage and resources is one of the reasons he was chosen for the job.

He said the push for WA to draw groundwater from Yarragadee in the South-West would result in irreparable environmental damage.

"Yarragadee is going to have a major impact on local communities and on the globally unique plants and animals down south and in the area around Nannup," he said.

"If you start putting bores in and drawing groundwater, the first things affected are shallow bodies of water, like ponds, which are groundwater-fed.
UWA professor Steve Hopper, who will become head of
Kew Gardens in London next week, said Perth shouldn't
draw its water from the South-West.

"A drop in ground level of half a metre will affect them ahead of deep lakes and rivers because they are full of plants and animals unique to south-western Australia and are significant globally.
"The environmental impacts are pretty scary and Yarragadee is only a short-term solution.
"People need to think long and hard about it; is it the start of a solution or a stop-gap that's going to cause long-term environmental damage?

"It doesn't solve the basic problem which is the expanding human population without a change in how we use water."

Dr Hopper said the Water Corporation was on track, looking at a mix of strategies to source water, including establishing a desalination plant and recycling grey water.
But Yarragadee was a repeat of the Gnangara Mounds strategy.

"If you look at Gnangarra Mounds it's pretty disturbing," he said.
"Some dams in Perth have had a decline in rainfall up to 50% and the Gnangara Mounds supplies are dwindling rapidly."

Dr Hopper said the community needed to embrace recycling water as a long-term strategy with local councils working together with householders.

"Hundreds of gigalitres go off the roads and our roofs every year," he said.
"If we got only half of that back, that's the same amount the South-West Yarragadee is going to deliver.

"There's a huge catchment of water that, with adequate treatment, would be perfect.
"If we want to live here for hundreds of years we've got to start doing things slightly differently."

As head of Kew Gardens, Dr Hopper will be in charge of the world's largest living collection of flora, with over 30,000 different species covering 120ha on the Thames in London.

Disease in captive endangered parrots mystifies scientists

2006-10-07T13:56:00.000+10:00

An orange-bellied parrot

Tasmania's endangered orange-bellied parrot is facing a mysterious threat.

Birds at the Environment Department's breeding centre near Hobart have been quarantined since January, when 46 young birds were killed by the disease.

Months of testing, in Australia and overseas, has not pinned down the cause.
Mark Holdsworth from the Parrot Recovery Program says the wild population does not appear to be affected.

"Wild population appears to be stable and we didn't detect any decline in the nestlings produced," he said.

"But before we can release birds from Taroona into the wild population we need to determine if this potential disease, which we believe may be a type of herpes virus, is in this population.

"It may in fact be that this disease is a native disease to orange-bellied parrots and we've just discovered it through captive breeding."

Tasmanian Primary Industries Minister David Llewellyn says the deaths of the 46 birds earlier this year was a regrettable incident, but it will not have any effect on the overall recovery program.

Badger Creek Budgie Show

2006-10-05T17:03:00.000+10:00

On Sunday, 8 October, more than 100 budgies will go on show at Badger Creek.

Local budgie enthusiasts are presenting an exhibition of show budgies at the Badger Creek Old School Building (opposite Healesville Sanctuary) from 11am to 3pm.

The aim of the exhibition is to improve awareness of showing and breeding and to share information with other budgie enthusiasts.

The show will also gauge interest in setting up a local budgie club.For more information phone 0419 591 617 or 5962 4640.

J-Bird, the adventuring parrot,

2006-09-29T14:30:00.000+10:00

On a Saturday morning in mid-August, Oxford Road resident Daniel Rinehart cleaned out the cage usually occupied by his pet parrot, J-Bird, and left it outdoors to air-dry.
Nothing too unusual about the activity, until Rinehart opened the door to carry the sizeable cage back inside. At that same moment J-Bird decided to take flight and instead of settling on his favored perch — his owner’s shoulder — the bird started off on what would become a different kind of vacation for the parrot.
J-Bird has traveled all over the United States, his owner explained, but usually as a passenger sitting on the front seat or the steering wheel of an automobile. The bird had never tried solo travel, said Rinehart, at least not until that day back in August.
“It was just perfect timing on his part,” recalled Rinehart about the day J-Bird … well… flew the coop.
For the rest of that day, as well as the next several days, Rinehart searched the surrounding woods, whistling and calling for his best friend, which he has owned for six years and which typically follows him around like a little puppy dog.
Having no luck finding the bird, Rinehart became disheartened.
“J-Bird always answers my calls,” said Rhinehart, admitting that he began thinking the worst, fearing a vehicle on the heavily trafficked U.S. 158 had hit the bird.
“I left the cage outdoors for four days,” he said, explaining he thought that perhaps if the bird saw his house he might fly back into the familiar safe haven. But after several days and still no sign of his green-feathered friend, Rinehart said, he had “pretty much given up” any hope of ever seeing his beloved J-Bird again.
Meanwhile …
About three miles away, later on that same Saturday J-Bird took flight, Beth Farabaugh was outdoors and out of the corner of her eye, she caught the glimpse of a flying green streak.
Farabaugh recalled thinking at the time, “What in the world is that?” Once the parrot landed on her roof she wondered, “Where in the world did it come from?”
Farabaugh, with assistance from her father who stood on the porch banister, attempted to scoop the bird into a box only to have the parrot fly to the neighbor’s roof.
Then the wandering bird decided to attempt a landing on the slippery hood of Farabaugh’s father’s truck, not an ideal landing surface for a parrot.
“The bird kept slipping around and my dad slowly backed up to the bird and it just stepped onto his shoulder,” explained Farabaugh.
“We gave it some oats and water. It was drinking water, but we didn’t know what to do with it.”
Then Farabaugh remembered that one of her co-workers owns parrots and made a call for help to Steve and Sherry Carpenter.
The Carpenters lost no time coming to the aid of the little lost bird and promptly rode to the Allensville Road location with a cage to pick up the willful traveler and, hopefully, solve the mystery of the little lost bird by locating its owner.
“We looked over the bird and it was in good shape,” said Steve Carpenter, who is manager of Person County when he’s not out rescuing parrots. And once they realized the bird was banded, both Steve and Sherry admitted they thought it would be an easy course to locate the owner.
“We knew it was a Meyers parrot,” said Steve, describing it as a “pretty green bird with a black cape — not rare,” he said, “but not that common either; and they are prone to fly,” he added
“Sherry spent the night on the Internet,” said Steve, explaining she spent time e-mailing aviary veterinarians and contacting breeders throughout the state, since the Carpenters had no idea where the bird had come from or how far it had traveled.
She also contacted Person County veterinarians and even called 911. The following Monday she took the bird to the animal shelter to have it scanned for possible microchip identification.
The Carpenters even contacted seed places and pet stores in case the owner put up notices of the lost bird — all to no avail.
From the bird’s band number the Carpenters could tell the bird’s age and that the bird had been bred in North Carolina. There are about six to eight Meyers breeders including one in nearby Haw River, said Steve.
But when they contacted the branding company, which generally keeps track of breeders and birds through records coinciding with numbers on the band, the Carpenters learned the company was no longer in business. They were advised there was no way to assess the defunct company’s records.
The sleuths had reached a dead-end.
Without knowing the bird’s given name, Steve and Sherry began calling their guest “Doc,” after a local veterinarian.
Armed with experience and knowledge on how to care for parrots, the Carpenters integrated the little bird into their own household, while keeping their two jenday conures and umbrella cockatoo isolated from the newcomer.
And just in case Doc decided to again take flight, the Carpenters clipped their new houseguest’s wings to ensure that he stop his nomadic ways.
“We clipped him, and he gained altitude; and we clipped him again. He still could go the length of the house. These birds are notorious for flight,” emphasized Steve, referring to Meyers parrots.
After two weeks and seemingly no closer to finding the owner, the Carpenters decided to put a classified ad in the “Lost and Found” section of The Courier-Times. The ad came out in the next Saturday edition. Without identifying the bird, the ad requested that the owner identify the band number to verify ownership, explained Steve.
That Saturday, the Carpenters received a few calls offering to give the bird a home if the owner could not be found, but still no owner.
And then Sunday morning came a call from a gentleman who identified the bird, but admitted he hadn’t a clue to the band number. Instead, he offered to bring photographs for positive identification.
The Carpenters were comfortably sure it was caller’s bird.
Rinehart was trembling with anticipation when he arrived at the Carpenters’ home, explained Steve, and when the owner and bird re-united, the bird’s response immediately affirmed the bond and relationship.
“From the bird’s reaction, I knew this was definitely his bird,” said Sherry.
A happy ending for bird and owner and yet another missing bird case resolved thanks to the tenacity of the Carpenters, for which Daniel Rinehart is grateful. He also is appreciative of the care given to J-Bird by the Carpenters.
“They are super people,” said Rinehart.
Yet despite the very good care he enjoyed at the Carpenters, J-Bird seems to be happier still to be back home — clipped wings and all.

Sugar Gliders

2006-09-27T13:26:00.000+10:00

Karen Says

my gliders who are my kids. they are with me for the past 7 yrs and they are loved and spoiled with love. I just adopted a couple more. and in spring possibly a forth. then I will have my hands full. they have free roam of my office when I'm in it at night and I stay up with them half the night. I want only the best for them. as they are so special to me. my angel is almost like human she understands everything I say to her. shes the old one.

Parrots call their baby chicks by name, German experts say

2006-09-22T17:33:00.000+10:00

From Monsters and Critics.com
Nature News By Ernest Gill

Hamburg - In a discovery that is likely to rekindle the debate about language in the animal kingdom, researchers in Germany have discovered that some parrots appear to give their offspring individual names.
Animal behavioural scientists at the University of Hamburg say that spectacled parrotlets use a distinctive call for each of their chicks, with no two chicks being given the same 'name' call.
The small South American parrots also apparently have name calls for their mates.
'The birds very definitely use a particular call exclusively with a particular bird and never for any other bird,' says Dr. Rolf Wanker, head of the Hamburg University Zoological Institute's behavioural research laboratory.
Wanker and his team have spent years assessing video and audio recordings of parrot chatter and squawking.
'What is not yet clear, however, is whether these calls can be equated with what we would call names such as Hans or Fritz or whether they could be more generic labels such as 'my baby' or 'my mate',' he adds.
'For that reason we prefer to refer to these calls as labels or name equivalents,'
The studies were inspired by observations in the spectacled parrotlet's natural habitat in Colombia. There, researchers from Hamburg noted that individual parrots seemed to respond to specific calls that other parrots in the same flock ignored.
'A mother bird had the uncanny ability to utter a cry that would result in her chick returning to the nest immediately amidst the cacophany of the other parrots all around,' Wanker recalls.
'It was obvious that the baby knew it was being called,' he says.
At the Hamburg lab, studies showed that these name equivalents are fractional cries lasting between 90 and 120 milliseconds.
The cry is distinctive enough to provide acoustic clues as to the identity of the individual uttering the call and also to the identity of the intended recipient bird.
'A mother bird uses a different call for her baby from the one she uses for her mate, and they respond with calls that correspondent to her identity,' he says.
Similar findings have been achieved with certain primates and with dolphins. Many years ago, British TV science producer David Attenborough showed that macaque monkeys use distinctive alarm calls to alert other monkeys to danger.
Macaques will use one call to identify a panther, thus telling other monkeys to climb up a tree. But they will use a different call to identify a python, thus ensuring that all the monkeys climb down a tree that has a snake lurking in its branches.
The Attenborough findings are of interest because they involve primates in the wild that have had little or no contact with humans.
That contrasts with studies involving chimpanzees and gorillas in captivity in America over the past four decades which have produced startling but highly controversial evidence that primates can learn and use deaf human sign language.
Other studies have determined that birds develop regional 'accents' and 'dialects' depending on their location. Sparrows in the eastern United States, for example, are known to have subtly different chirps from their cousins on the west coast.
The German findings are the first involving parrots. The spectacled parrotlet is among the smallest parrots, only slightly larger than budgerigars. The bright green birds with a distinctive yellow ring around their eyes live in eastern Panama and northern Colombia.
In the Hamburg study, parent birds and their chicks were placed in separate cages within earshot of each other but out of view of each other.
The birds' calls to each other were recorded and later played back to the individual birds to ascertain their response. The findings demonstrated that name-specific calls were used by each bird.
Wanker shies away from calling this labelling behaviour any form of language, noting that it has yet to be proved conclusively whether humans are the only animals capable of abstract linguistic structures.
He also notes that a fierce debate has been raging for decades among ornithologists and linguists over whether songbirds might be using a form of language. But he points out that, in the avian world, parrots are a special case.
'Parrots are unique among avians,' he says. 'They are the primates of the avian world and are very highly developed creatures with complex social systems and prodigious cognitive skills.'

Some readers comments

Parrots are quite intelligent, and some definitely have language (albeit simpler
than ours, obviously). African Grey Congos in particular seem to have a
slightly
more evolved ability to speak, having both superior sound
reproduction compared
to other parrot species and typically several times
larger vocabularies than
other talking species.Birds are mostly of interest
in language research because
they are able to learn and communicate with us
in our language. Alex and Dr.
Pepperberg (of the Alex Foundation) are
probably the most notorious; her
research clearly indicates Alex's ability
to verbally identify various objects
and attributes (e.g. colour, matter,
and shape) by visual and tactile
identification.I used to be close friends
with a Soviet Union expat in town with
a degree in linguistics. She raised
her Grey, Picadilly, as though it were her
child -- and taught it as she
would a young child to speak both English and
Russian. The bird learned not
only to parrot the words it heard, but also how to
conjugate basic verbs in
both English and Russian. Speaking from my own personal
experience with my
Grey, he is less of a talker and more of a whistler (a sound
Greys are more
familiar with as their own 'native' calls are similar in sound).
We both
share certain whistles that corrolate to specific meanings: One for
excitement/jubilation, another for mourning when I'm lonely because my wife
is
out of town, and another that means both "goodbye [to you]" and "I want
to go to
bed" (which involves putting a cover over the cage, equating to
much the same
thing, I suppose).The notion that someone is just now
discovering that some
parrots use "words" to describe identity suggests
they're a couple decades
behind the times. That being said, do parrots
sometimes just "parrot" the sounds
they hear back? Of course! They have a
special preference for sounds that get
your attention, including the loud,
funny, and especially those things you
shouldn't have said.

Some human languages can be whistled, an interesting experiment might be to
use one of them for training a young parrot. That way less effort on producing
the sounds is needed on the part of the bird and, presumably, more into the
grammar and syntax of the language.
This has interested me before but sadly I'm not from the South American
regions that employ it (as apparently it is convenient for communicating across
distances of miles in the hills of the Andes) nor do I know anyone who is. As I
understand it, the "language" is in fact little more than a phrasebook of
perhaps a hundred or so useful phrases for communicating with family/colleagues
about having found something, heading home for the day, that sort of thing; It
might therefore be better just to get an idea of the language then adapt it for
activities that are meaningful for the bird's environment.

I wrote that comment based on vague childhood recollections of someone else's travellogue, but from that recall that it was an actual language rather than a code book of phrases.
Doing a very quick and sloppy search, I find one at least: Silbo. If only four vowels and four consonants sounds limiting, keep in mind how well the Spanish equivalent of pig latin works though all the vowels are changed to i.
Anyway, it might be easier to take some fresh birds to people already using Silbo for a study.

I've said it before, and I shall now say it again:
We really don't
understand what "thinking" is, and I think that as we find out more what
thinking is, we will find that we humans think far less than we think we think,
and that animals think far more than we think they think.
I think.
I have 10 small birds, but have owned many others on and off over the
years. Yep, they are totally smart, as well as smarties too lol (I
dont know where the small brain stuff came from...)none of them say any english
words, but they sure know their names I gave them and respond. :)
I took care of my friend's cockatoo for a week or so when she was on
vacation, and they're definitely not dumb animals. It not only had a vocabulary,
but if I ever mentioned her name, it would get visibly excited, raising it's
feathers and whatnot. It obviously associated her name with her, as it also
associated the phrase "cover up" with loud screeching.Andrew, the "small brain
stuff" is about how their brains are physically smaller than ours, thus there is
less there.
I don't know if parrots can talk.I kwon they can fly. Or shoud if were
not caged.Put a bird in a cage is one of the worst things that "intelligent"
humans do..
Most pet birds spend plenty of time out of their cages; Mine spends more out
than in, not counting sleep. That said, feels most secure when he is close to or
completely inside his cage, and he is happiest when his human flock are within
calling distance. He was raised in captivity to be part of a captive breeding
program but wasn't interested in mating; he couldn't live in the wild even if
this were his native biome. Presumably you'd rather he were euthanised than have
him live out an untroubled, "flightless" existance as a pet and part of a family
unit -- something that is more important to parrots (most of which live and die
as a flock species, for whom the flock is everything to them) than humans. What
about captive breeding programs to try to revive nearly-extinct species like
Spix's macaw? You'd rather look at them in a history book too, apparently,
probably near the pages dedicated to the Dodo.Someone here mentioned taking care
of a pet cockatoo for a week or two; I mentioned the Grey Congo. You do know
that these parrots are considered pests in their native countries, right?
Farmers trap and slaughter them by the hundreds with clubs to prevent them from
decimating their crops. But I'm glad you'd rather see them "flying free" as ash
from a bonfire than in the hands of some malevolent human.
About parrots considered pests in their country, I made a quick research
and didn't find anything about that. I'm not saying that isn't true. I'm saying
that I didn't find anything ab
out that. What I know is that exists a illegal
commerce of wild birds. My country, shame of the shames, is a source of these
pour animals, specialy macaws and parrots. It's usual to see news about police
operations against these criminals. But they still exist and, money talks loud,
they are growing. More shame.
About captive breeding programs there are two
faces: one about nearly-extinct species, a very brave and beautiful
iniciative no doubt. Other face is to provide "legal" pets and "preserve"
the wild ones that remain. Sounds good, at first sight. But, the fact is that
kind of program just incentivate people to have birds and who can't pay for
a legal one goes to the illegal others. I'm just asking: why do we need so hard
to have a bird? If no one buy the illegal wild birds, no one will sold
then.
I like birds a lot. I made a place for then out of my house.
And I put fruits (bananas, oranges, papayas, pomegranates, etc), fodder,
seeds and water for then there. There are different kinds of birds at
different hours of the day. And only once there was a parrot there. But it is
very usual to see a lot of "maritacas" (I don't know how it is named in english,
but the bird is very similar to a parrot except their head are smaller and they
can't vocalize, just whistle. Better: scream. They're very noisy). All birds are
wellcome and they are free to come in and get out when they want.. It's a very
special sensation when they come back. I know they don't like me: they like the
food. But still something special.
It's not necessary a cage to take care of
a bird. Of course: if they never leaved the cage, they don't know how to live
out there. But we need to act to convert the captive population of birds into
free birds. It's not something fast to change. But I think if more and more
people become aware of that birds were not made for a cage maybe in two or
three hundred years it can be done.
"You may say I'm a dreamer. But
I'm not the only one." You know who said that. You know the rest.
Here, where
I live, if a policeman catch you killing a bird, even to eat,
even it is a regular bird finded by the thousands you will be jailed. No
bail allowed (yeah, despite all the shame I've mentionated before, third world
has laws too). Of course birds can cause damage at farms here too. But the
farmers found alternative ways to deal with it. And, of course, some of
then still using the bad methods that have been mentionated or worse. But
it is changing. There is a light in tunnel's end. And it's not the train, I
hope. You may think that is discordant what I said early about growing criminals
that sales wild birds (and other animals) and it realy is. But it is
true.
There are, certainly, some situations that turns some birds life in
nature impossible. There's nothing wrong to take care of these birds (or any
other animal). It's a very beatiful act in fact. But I think these cases
are not most of full population of caged birds.

I was on vacation and the place I was staying had a sofa, a good bookshelf, the
sound of the surf and a light tropical breeze coming in through an open door and
a large picture-window-sized opening in the wall, food and drink and a several
parrots in large cages around the area. One of them was right at the end of the
sofa.
After several days of blissful vegetation on that sofa I thought I
must be dreaming. I heard "c'mere! c'mere!" coming from the parrot behind my
head. I twisted myself around, and the parrot was looking right at me. I don't
know if it said it again. I got up, went to the cage door, opened it, put my
hand in, the parrot (his name was Moses) climbed on my hand and from there up my
arm to my shoulder, and that was it. For the rest of the two weeks we were
inseparable. One afternoon while I was feeding him peanuts or popcorn or
something he decided to clean my eyelashes with his beak. It took me about a
beat to decide to trust him on that one.
When I went to put him back in the
cage on the day I left, he fought me. I still miss that bird, and it's been more
than ten years.
He never spoke except for those first words. I never tried
to get him to.

Parrots return to Adams County Fair

2006-09-18T14:00:00.000+10:00

Birds need intellectual stimulation, owner says

Will Stedman's parrots drive a car. They ride a bicycle and a scooter. They ring the dinner bell and they say "Hi" and "Bye-bye."And all this week, they make their return. Stedman and his show, the Hollywood Educated Parrots, so named for their experiences on TV and in the movies, are back at the Adams County Fair for a second year."They must have liked what we did last year," Stedman said. "And we love it over here."
'When he was a child, Stedman would visit Othello because he had relatives who owned an apple orchard in the area. His brother-in-law's mother and brother still live in Othello, he said."There are family ties here, and I do remember coming over here as a very young child," he said. "We'll be here as long as they have it, this is one of our favorite fairs. It's the people. You walk in the gate and you feel like you're amongst friends."Based in Seattle, Stedman began performing as a magician when he was 14 years old."It was an interesting progression," he said of making the move from magic to parrots. About 20 years ago, he began working for one of the leading names in magic, who was in the process of becoming semi-retired. The veteran magician hired several younger performers who knew their way around magic. He had purchased the parrot act, performing at shopping malls, fairs and as the middle act in his magic show."Over the years in working with him, he noticed that I got along with the birds and the birds got along with me," Stedman said.Stedman was eager to work with the birds, and starting performing with them, ultimately purchasing the act seven years ago when the magician retired."Even when I was a magician, you depend on rabbits, doves, ducks," Stedman said. "Animals have always been part of what I do. I feel very strongly, not just as a performer. Me, I'm very much an animal person. And whether it be wildlife or livestock, animals are as equally important to the world we live in as we are."For fairs and festivals, Stedman and three birds -- blue and gold macaws Billy, Barney and cockatoo Fred -- perform as the Hollywood Educated Parrot Show, primarily throughout the northwest United States. For school assemblies, the birds do a lot of the same tricks, but with an emphasis on environmental education.Stedman also has several other rescued birds. He noted sometimes an owner decides they don't want a bird anymore, which can be very traumatic."When we hear those situations, my wife and I, we take in rescued birds," he said. "And you think I'm an animal person, you should meet my wife."Because of their intelligence, Stedman compared parrots to toddlers."You also have to stimulate them - you have to play with them, provide a variety of cars so they don't get bored. It's like having a child in the house," he said. "To really take care of a pet bird properly, you've got to be willing to put the time in to take care of them that way."Play time for parrotsWhile some trainers use starvation as a way to train parrots for a performance act, Stedman does not."Our animals are never trained by depravation," he said. His birds eat whatever they want, but sunflower seeds are removed from their diet, so the only way parrots can get a seed is from his hand. "They can eat their vegetables, they can eat their food, but the treat, the candy, comes from the training periods."Parrots learn their act backwards from the way they perform, Stedman said."A bird, you start at the end of the behavior you want," he said. In teaching a parrot to drive the small car across a table, for example, he waits until the bird is on the car at the end of the table and touches the control handle with its beak.The minute that happens, Stedman says "Good!" and gives the bird a sunflower seed. The cry of praise is a vocal cue that the bird did something right and the seed a reward, he explained. So pretty soon, the parrot knows it gets a reward and every time it is on the car, it will touch the handle."When they're doing it every single time, now you have to hold off and they have to actually grab it," Stedman said. The praise and the seed will continue. Next they have to grab and pull."What will happen, they'll grab and get frustrated, so to get your attention," the bird pulls back on the handle, Stedman said. This action is again rewarded and learned.Then he puts batteries in the car and moves it back a little bit."Now when they pull, the car's going to move," Stedman said. "It takes getting used to, so the minute they do it, 'Good!' 'Oh, that's what it's supposed to do.' And then you move the car back farther and farther ... You start at the end of the behavior, and you work up to the front of the behavior."Once a parrot knows the routine of learning, it can learn a trick in a few weeks, being taught two to three times a day in 20 minute increments."It's important that people understand that the birds are not being manipulated, it truly is play time for them to be out here," he said.

Exotic existence: Parakeets nesting in Louisiana back yard

2006-09-12T13:31:00.000+10:00

When Lois Martin walks out into her back yard, she can hear the raucous call of parrots. Sometimes, they land on her fence and visit for a while.
Martin doesn't live south of the border, but just slightly south of Lafayette. Her home is in Lafayette Parish, where Duson meets Maurice.

Wild monk parakeets are nesting in a neigboring tree, just across her fence. Martin said she has spotted five of them. The birds, which are actually small parrots, are also called Quaker parrots. Martin, a former bird breeder from Virginia, owns four monk parakeets of her own - domesticated birds that live in wrought iron cages on her patio. "(The wild parrots) hear them and I'm sure that's what calls them to my back yard - maybe what attracted them to this neighborhood," Martin said.
Although it's unusual for wild exotic birds to establish colonies in the Lafayette area, there are monk parakeets living and thriving in New Orleans, said Nature Station curator Bill Fontenot.
"They're established in Chicago, Portland (Ore.), in the Northeast, Florida, Texas and in Louisiana, now," Fontenot said. "They can only make it in urban settings. In New Orleans, the palms are providing them a nesting substrate and something to eat. I'm intrigued to know what these birds are eating."
Where the birds came from is a mystery.
They could have escaped from a local home, said LSU ornithology professor Van Remson. "There could have been enough of them that they formed their own colony. Or two could have come from New Orleans, although Lafayette isn't exactly next door. Or they could have come from someplace else. There's no way to distinguish."
Monk parakeets aren't the first non-native birds to establish themselves in the United States, Remsen said. "From Europe, we have house sparrows, European starlings, the rock pigeon, the common city pigeon and the Eurasian collared dove.
The monk parakeet is just one of the latest arrivals that is able to survive in its new environment, he said.

While the birds are a novelty here, in some areas, they are considered to be an environmental threat.
"At one time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture was going to try to exterminate them," Remsen said. "In Argentina, they are a severe agricultural pest."
Martin is familiar with the potential for problems.
"They build huge community nests and they like the high tension wires. Especially in Florida, they're always having to go out and knock nests down."
Even so, Martin said she wishes she had a tree large enough in her own yard to accommodate them.
"It's thrilling for me to see them in the wild."

Bird Flu Update

2006-09-07T16:13:00.000+10:00

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A Passion for Parrots and the Fight to Save Them in the Wild

2006-09-06T17:12:00.000+10:00

On a sweltering afternoon this summer, Joseph M. Forshaw, an Australian ornithologist, strolled through Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, scanning the trees for feral monk parrots. No one knows how these squawking green birds, usually native to Argentina, first arrived in New York. But they thrive in wooded corners throughout the city.

Stephen Baldwin, 50, founder of the Brooklyn Parrot Society, explained that the birds eat whatever they find — “pine buds, berries, pizza.”
Mr. Forshaw, 67. smiled. “Ah, parrots are such wonderful generalists,” he said.
The former head of wildlife conservation for the Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service, Mr. Forshaw knows parrots’ talents. The author or co-author of 16 ornithological books, he is considered the world’s leading expert on the parrot. His latest, from Princeton University Press, is “Parrots of the World: An Identification Guide,” which he hopes will give “conservationists new tools for fighting the traffic in wild birds for the pet trade.”
“It was the pet trade that probably first brought your monk parrots to Brooklyn,” he says. “These fellows are managing well. But elsewhere, the results are often tragic.”
Q. For how long have parrots had an association with humans?
A. Certainly for much of recorded human history. Alexander the Great brought parrots back from his Asian expeditions. The ancient Romans had them, too. When Australia and South America were opened up to Europeans by the voyages of discovery of the 16th and 17th century, the international trade in the birds really began. Today the parakeet is second to the goldfish as the world’s most popular pet.

Q. For how long have parrots had an association with humans?
A. Certainly for much of recorded human history. Alexander the Great brought parrots back from his Asian expeditions. The ancient Romans had them, too. When Australia and South America were opened up to Europeans by the voyages of discovery of the 16th and 17th century, the international trade in the birds really began. Today the parakeet is second to the goldfish as the world’s most popular pet.
Q. Do you have any insight why parrots make such good pets?
A. Unlike most other birds, they can imitate human speech. That endears them to people and creates a bond. If you keep a blue jay or a sparrow, it’s not going to do more than hop around in a cage. A parrot will talk to you.
One of the most memorable birds I’d ever encountered was a corella, a kind of Australian cockatoo. In the 1970’s, a woman rang up a research institute where I worked complaining of a bird she’d inherited from her deceased grandfather. We took it off her hands. It turned out this corella had originally been given to her grandfather by some Aboriginals. As a young man, in 1910, the grandfather had worked on the construction of the Australian railway system, and somewhere the Aboriginals had gifted him with this bird. Well, the corella had a repertoire of camp noises from the railway, pots and pans, brash talk — and he did all this in an Aboriginal dialect! Sixty years later! These birds have an amazing learning capacity.
Q. Some biologists believe that parrots can actually understand the words they speak. Do you agree?
A. I think that’s probably taking parrot intelligence a little too far. What the birds have probably done is learned the association between words and actions. They’ve learned that certain words generate certain actions — whether that equates with “understanding,” I don’t know.
Wild parrots make contact calls to each other which are mainly given in flight to maintain cohesion within flocks or between birds in trees and those flying overhead. What happens with pets is they substitute their owners for flock members and learn to imitate their “calls,” which are words.
We do know that parrots in the wild make their calls in regional dialects. A study of wild birds in Trinidad established that the dialect sounds are learned by the young from their parrot-parents. A researcher took parrot chicks from nests in one area and moved them into nests elsewhere. He found that the chicks learned the dialectical calls of the adopted parents.
Q. So do we love these birds because they’re smart?
A. They are very clever birds. Plus, they are beautiful, affectionate and loyal. They bond with you as if you are their mate. My pet red-capped parrot will allow me to scratch her neck, but she retreats if my wife comes to her. In fact, she’s jealous of my wife, who is actually very good-natured about it.

The thing I see as I travel is that people truly love their parrots. Once I was in Brazil doing field research. Word got around in this little village that this crazy Australian had come from the other side of the world to see parrots. So when I came out of the hotel, a dozen villagers had lined the sidewalk holding their caged pets for me to inspect. Most of the birds were quite ordinary, but included among them were Amazona vinacea, an uncommon species I’d been searching for, but had been unable to find in the wild.

Q. Are people loving parrots to death?
A. I think so. A third of all parrot species are threatened or endangered. The bird is at once ubiquitous and endangered. The most pressing threat is habitat destruction because of logging and agriculture. There’s additional pressure from the pet trade where wild parrots are being taken from the tropics for sale in Europe and North America. There’s tremendous mortality when the birds are transported. It is estimated that for every wild bird who makes it to the pet shop, at least 10 die.
Q. So should people stop keeping parrots at all?
A. I think they should probably only purchase captive-bred birds. Frankly, I question whether we need to take parrots from the wild at all. One of the biggest problems with the pet trade is that there’s a huge demand for rare species, like the hyacinth macaw. These birds just can’t sustain the assault of organized harvesting.
Q. Australia has stringent prohibitions against the export of wild parrots. Should other countries follow suit?
A. For us, this policy works. There still is some smuggling, but it’s minimal. So when you get off at Sydney International Airport, you walk out of the terminal, and there are cockatoos in front of you and following you around. If you go to Indonesia, you can be there for three weeks and you might never see one. They have virtually uncontrolled export. The comparison speaks for itself.
Q. In the tropics, it’s common for people to eat parrots. Have you ever done it?
A. Terrible to say: I have. And the ones I’ve eaten were not too bad. It was a sulphur-crested cockatoo. We were in the outback, collecting specimens of birds that had been killed for agriculture protection. The airplane that was supposed to bring supplies was delayed, and things got difficult. So when we finished our measurements of the birds, we just chopped the breasts up and dropped them into the pot. We did it out of desperation.
Q. Did it taste like chicken?
A. No, they are very gamy.
Q. How did parrots become your life’s work?
A. If you grow up in Australia, you can’t help but be interested in them because they are everywhere. Australia has the highest diversity of parrots in the world.
As a child, I kept an aviary with them. At university in the 1950’s, I studied pharmacy. In those times, there was no such thing then as professional ornithology studies. But then in 1962, at a meeting of an amateur ornithology society, I met someone who invited me to work in wildlife research at the Australian Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. That was the beginning of my professional career.
Today, I live in Canberra, and if I put a feeder in my backyard, I’ll see five or six different parrot species in a day. If I travel to the outback, I can see great big flocks of them. That makes me glad to be an Australian. I can’t imagine what life would be like without parrots.

Rare, exotic birds on show at new bird park

2006-08-31T16:07:00.000+10:00

A UNIQUE array of birds from around the world, collected by East London resident Owen Sanders, can soon be viewed by the public.

Sanders approached the municipality for permission to establish a registered bird park at his Bunker’s Hill home several years ago. It then took several years to plan and build.

In the last five years, suspended stainless steel aviaries were constructed. This hygienic method allows for any food dropped by the birds to fall onto a cement floor and be washed away.

Into the cages of his Flamingo Gardens bird park, Sanders has put birds indigenous to Africa and others from Indonesia, Australia and South America.

Among them are toucans, macaws and even a pair of highly endangered Cape parrots.

“Their interaction with humans and the way they mimic different sounds fascinates me,” said Sanders, who acquired his first bird when he was six. He has been interested in birds ever since.

There are only about 500 recorded sightings of Cape parrots each year and they are usually confined to the Amatola mountains, Transkei and KwaZulu-Natal.

In the last 10 years, Sanders developed a fascination for the more rare and exotic birds. “People can see a collection of birds here that they won’t normally be able to see in the average zoo,” he said.

If cared for properly, birds can live for a long time. Included in Sanders’ collection are a pair of blue-fronted Amazon parrots that have been in captivity for 30 years: “Unlike humans, birds don’t show their age.”

Also in his collection are female Jardine and Ruppells’ parrots which are more colourful than the cocks – unlike the rest of the bird kingdom where males usually outdo females.

There are also three varieties of toucans in the park – all of which make completely different calls.

According to Sanders, these birds are the most expensive to keep in captivity as they require a specialised fruit and pellet diet. Ingredients are imported from Belgium.

Another interesting bird is the military macaw, which gets its name from the distinct red band across its forehead. “He is prone to blushing – his cheeks turning a variation of light-to-dark pink when he is embarrassed or nervous,” said Sanders.

The park is wheelchair-friendly and set in an indigenous garden that consists of a large number of cycads, some rare, from all over Africa. “Having an indigenous garden gives a flavour that this is Africa,” he said.

He is also planning to put indigenous yellow fish into his pond and bring a variety of indigenous water fowl to the park.

The park, in John Bailie Road, will be open to the public for the first time from Friday – by appointment only.

Local Bird Lovers Flock To Parrot Event

2006-08-30T19:25:00.000+10:00

Parrot Picnic
The South Western Ontario Parrot Club held a Parrot Picnic at the Masonic Temple early last week. The club holds annual meetings to encourage bird socialization, provide important training and discipline techniques, as well as, offer bird sitting within the group should a club member go on holidays. The club boasts a wide variety of parrots ranging from as small as 3 inches (love birds) to as large as 44 inches (Blue Hyacinth). Parrots are highly intelligent companions that can mimic a vast array of sounds, including cell phone rings, squeaking doors, alarm clocks and the human voice. The birds are capable of being potty trained on command and perform several tricks. The club is currently accepting new members and meet every 3rd Tuesday of the month at the Masonic Temple. For more information you can email Kelly Adamski at: spa@EcoOneNorth.com

Charismatic island dwellers saved from extinction

2006-08-25T16:53:00.000+10:00

Conservation action saved 16 bird species from extinction between 1994 and 2004. Although they represent just 1.3% of the world’s threatened birds, these successes demonstrate that, given political will and resources, we have the knowledge and tools to turn back the tide of extinction.
In their paper How many bird extinctions have we prevented? (Oryx, July 2006), BirdLife authors Stuart Butchart, Alison Stattersfield and Nigel Collar explain how they identified these 16 cases: the first time anyone has attempted to quantify the results of global conservation action in this way for any group of organisms.
The majority had populations of fewer than 100 birds in 1994, with only four known breeding pairs of Chatham Island Taiko Pterodroma magentae, just four breeding female Norfolk Island Green Parrots Cyanoramphus cookie, and five pairs of Mauritius Parakeet Psittacula eques (three of which had bred without success).
Conservation actions for 11 species were implemented through a mixture of governments and non-governmental organisations, with governments alone responsible for the rest. BirdLife International contributed to action for seven species.
“By 2004 some species had undergone very significant population growth,” Stuart Butchart explained. “Norfolk Island Green Parrot increased almost ten-fold from 32–37 individuals to 200–300 individuals, and Mauritius Parakeet ten-fold from five pairs to 55 pairs.”
However, these 16 species are not a representative sample of the world’s threatened bird species, since 10 are confined to islands, where small-scale action can be more effective, while more than half of all threatened birds are continental, and often affected by broader-scale habitat loss and degradation.
Three-quarters of the species could also be considered “charismatic” (parrots, raptors, pigeons, large waterbirds etc.) while just 48% of all Critically Endangered birds would qualify. Butchart suspects that charismatic species may capture conservationists’ attention more easily, and are certainly easier to raise funds for, and to change public opinion about.

Parrots call their baby chicks by name, German experts say

2006-08-01T13:03:00.000+10:00

Hamburg - In a discovery that is likely to rekindle the debate about language in the animal kingdom, researchers in Germany have discovered that some parrots appear to give their offspring individual names.
Animal behavioural scientists at the University of Hamburg say that spectacled parrotlets use a distinctive call for each of their chicks, with no two chicks being given the same 'name' call.
The small South American parrots also apparently have name calls for their mates.
'The birds very definitely use a particular call exclusively with a particular bird and never for any other bird,' says Dr. Rolf Wanker, head of the Hamburg University Zoological Institute's behavioural research laboratory.
Wanker and his team have spent years assessing video and audio recordings of parrot chatter and squawking.
'What is not yet clear, however, is whether these calls can be equated with what we would call names such as Hans or Fritz or whether they could be more generic labels such as 'my baby' or 'my mate',' he adds.
'For that reason we prefer to refer to these calls as labels or name equivalents,'
The studies were inspired by observations in the spectacled parrotlet's natural habitat in Colombia. There, researchers from Hamburg noted that individual parrots seemed to respond to specific calls that other parrots in the same flock ignored.
'A mother bird had the uncanny ability to utter a cry that would result in her chick returning to the nest immediately amidst the cacophany of the other parrots all around,' Wanker recalls.
'It was obvious that the baby knew it was being called,' he says.
At the Hamburg lab, studies showed that these name equivalents are fractional cries lasting between 90 and 120 milliseconds.
The cry is distinctive enough to provide acoustic clues as to the identity of the individual uttering the call and also to the identity of the intended recipient bird.
'A mother bird uses a different call for her baby from the one she uses for her mate, and they respond with calls that correspondent to her identity,' he says.
Similar findings have been achieved with certain primates and with dolphins. Many years ago, British TV science producer David Attenborough showed that macaque monkeys use distinctive alarm calls to alert other monkeys to danger.
Macaques will use one call to identify a panther, thus telling other monkeys to climb up a tree. But they will use a different call to identify a python, thus ensuring that all the monkeys climb down a tree that has a snake lurking in its branches.
The Attenborough findings are of interest because they involve primates in the wild that have had little or no contact with humans.
That contrasts with studies involving chimpanzees and gorillas in captivity in America over the past four decades which have produced startling but highly controversial evidence that primates can learn and use deaf human sign language.
Other studies have determined that birds develop regional 'accents' and 'dialects' depending on their location. Sparrows in the eastern United States, for example, are known to have subtly different chirps from their cousins on the west coast.
The German findings are the first involving parrots. The spectacled parrotlet is among the smallest parrots, only slightly larger than budgerigars. The bright green birds with a distinctive yellow ring around their eyes live in eastern Panama and northern Colombia.
In the Hamburg study, parent birds and their chicks were placed in separate cages within earshot of each other but out of view of each other.
The birds' calls to each other were recorded and later played back to the individual birds to ascertain their response. The findings demonstrated that name-specific calls were used by each bird.
Wanker shies away from calling this labelling behaviour any form of language, noting that it has yet to be proved conclusively whether humans are the only animals capable of abstract linguistic structures.
He also notes that a fierce debate has been raging for decades among ornithologists and linguists over whether songbirds might be using a form of language. But he points out that, in the avian world, parrots are a special case.
'Parrots are unique among avians,' he says. 'They are the primates of the avian world and are very highly developed creatures with complex social systems and prodigious cognitive skills.'
The Hamburg research group plans to expand its study to include macaws at the Hagenbeck Zoo in Hamburg.

Hard Yakka Pics of my Budgies

2006-07-30T22:27:00.000+10:00

The first picture is a picture of my budgies "kissing" each other which i think is really cute and the second picture i of the female budgie and her name is Spice and last but not least the third picture is of the male budgerigar and his name is Apple. They dont have any babies yet but i hope they breed!!!!! :) at the moment they have a nest box and they always pop in to check it out and then back out again. This site is the best because it answered all my budgie questions. =)

Regards Frank

Parrots 'as intelligent' as young children

2006-07-22T21:37:00.000+10:00

An American scientist says the results of a 29-year study suggest parrots could be as intelligent as five-year-old humans.

Brandeis University Professor Irene Pepperberg says her study of Alex, an african grey parrot, shows parrots have an impressive intelligence.

"They're about the same intelligence as a five-year-old child but their communication skills, at least as far as we've looked at in the lab, are only about that of a two-year-old," she said.

"So no long, complicated sentences but the ability to answer the questions that we ask."

Alex can identify 100 objects, most of them food and toys from around his home.

He can add up and identify seven colours.

"If you put language in quotes, yes, they use English speech," Professor Pepperberg said.

"So if I ask Alex … how many keys; he'll tell me 'two'.

"If I ask him what colour, he'll say 'green and if I ask what shape, he'll say 'three-quarter'."
Routine questions

Professor Pepperberg says Alex can use simple phrases to say where he wants to go, and even has a few more complex sentences under his wing.

"There are long phrases that he has that have what we call general reference, but not specific reference," she said.

"We'll have what we call the goodnight routine, so when we leave at night this: 'You be good, I'll see you tomorrow' or 'I'm going to go eat dinner, I'll see you tomorrow' - things like that.

"He has a general sense of the appropriateness of when these are supposed to be said, but probably doesn't understand what all those words mean."

But Alex is no galah - when he does not want to do what is asked, he makes it known.

"He'll generally perform with almost perfect accuracy for about the first maybe 12, 15 trials, and then he just does not want to do it … he'll sit there and he'll preen, or he'll give me all the wrong answers in a row, which takes a lot of intelligence because he's avoiding the one correct answer," the Professor said.

"If he's giving me six wrong answers in a row, you know he's avoiding that seventh answer carefully.

"So you know he knows it, because by chance he couldn't do that."
Autistic children

Professor Pepperberg became interested in parrots after realising there was little study done in the area.

Her research is now being used to help children with learning difficulties.

"I've been working with a colleague, Diane Sherman, who's in Monterey at New-Found Therapies, and she's been adapting our training procedures for work with autistic children, with very good results," Professor Pepperberg said.

"She's helped these children immensely. None of the children have reached completely normal stages, but all of them have progressed significantly."

Professor Pepperberg says she does not know if parrots' consciousness is the same as humans'.

"They certainly have what we call perceptual awareness," she said.

"They're very much aware of their environment, they're aware of everything around them.

"Are they aware of being aware? That is the really critical question."

A 70-year commitment

2006-07-05T12:03:00.000+10:00

"There is a bird over-population problem just like the dog and cat over-population problem." Meredith Wilhelmi, With Exotic Bird Rescue of Oregon

At the Macaw Landing Foundation in Northeast Portland, about 70 parrots fly free in a huge aviary. The birds are an incredible swirl of brilliant colors: red, orange, green, turquoise, yellow. Some of them have wingspans of more than 3 feet. The screeching is overwhelming. On a hot summer day, it's easy to feel transported for a moment to the Amazon, where macaws live in the wild.

"This is a playroom full of 2-year-olds who never grow up," says Jack Devine, founder of the foundation. As charming as that may seem, perpetual childhood is a problem. Living for decades with a noisy, high-strung toddler isn't for most of us.

In the past decade, parrots have become one of America's most popular pets. The result is predictable: Rescue organizations are awash in parrots.

"There is a bird overpopulation problem just like the dog and cat overpopulation problem," says Meredith Wilhelmi, foster home and adoption coordinator for Exotic Bird Rescue of Oregon (www.rescuebird.com). Exotic Bird Rescue has 250 parrots in foster care, looking for good homes.

Every bird at Macaw Landing used to be somebody's pet. The owners turned over the birds when they ended up too big, aggressive, noisy -- or just too much work. The macaws here will live out their lives with the foundation. But the sanctuary is full.

"I get four or five calls a week from people looking for a home for their macaws," Devine says. There are few places for the birds to go.

Rescuers say the problem will only get worse. Parrots live for up to 70 years, and over the course of those long lives, most will go through multiple homes.

The plea from rescuers is for parrot lovers to think, and think again, before they buy. For most people, parrots aren't a good fit. For homes that have the time and energy to give to a bird, a rescue parrot can be a better alternative than buying a baby bird.

Here are some things to consider before bringing home a feathered friend.

Think before you buy: "Parrots tend to be such an impulse purchase," says Pamela Clark, an avian behaviorist who lives in Independence.

She says bird behavior changes dramatically at sexual maturity, and that too few people who buy a sweet baby bird are prepared for the realities of life with a mature adult. When birds grow up, they become more aggressive, energetic and noisy. There is no safe way to neuter birds.

"They reach sexual maturity and it's all over," Clark says.

When once-sweet birds become adults, many people can't handle them. They turn to rescue organizations, or even euthanize the animals.

Many birds also mutilate themselves, plucking out their feathers, biting their feathers or even biting themselves. About half of pet parrots show some level of feather-picking behaviors.

Devine admits that the Macaw Landing Foundation traces its roots back to guilt he feels over his feather-plucking green-wing macaw, Scarlet. For years, Scarlet was a happy companion, spending hours every day with Devine. Then, 15 years ago, Devine went on a weeklong vacation. He came home to a bird that was tearing her feathers out. She still feather-plucks, her breast a naked symbol of stress.

"I've almost cried myself to sleep at many nights over what I did to this bird," Devine says.

Clark says many parrot behavior problems can be traced back to the breeders. "Parrots aren't that difficult to breed. There are people who present themselves as authorities merely because they can breed them," she says.

Birds teach their young social skills, just like advanced mammals do. When the breeders sell young birds before they're emotionally ready to leave the nest, those birds pay a price. She gives the example of Moluccan cockatoos, which some breeders sell at age 15 weeks. These birds don't leave a nest naturally until they are about a year old. Force-fed commercial babies aren't likely to have the coping skills necessary to live as pets.

While breeders who care more about the bottom line than the birds' welfare are bad, smugglers are worse. Although it's been illegal to import wild-caught birds into the United States since 1992, the high price of rare parrots encourages an underground economy in smuggled birds.

"Ounce for ounce, a hyacinth macaw is more valuable to smugglers than cocaine," Devine says.

Provide a great environment: Once a bird comes to your home, he will need a lot of care. It starts with a cage. "The bird's cage should be like a kid's bedroom -- an exciting, colorful place to be with lots of stuff to do," Wilhelmi says. Cages need to be big enough for the bird to move and flap his wings. A parrot also needs time outside of his cage for at least an hour a day.

Diet is also important, helping birds cope with the stress of living a captive life. Sadly, few parrots get what they need.

"Malnutrition is the norm," Clark says. A decade ago, most birds were fed seeds. Diets improved with bird pellets -- the avian equivalent of kibble. But one-size-fits-all food doesn't work for parrots. These birds aren't just different breeds -- they also are different species. There is a vast difference between what an African grey parrot eats in the wild and what a macaw eats in South America. The best bet is to learn as much as possible about the native habitat of each bird, and try to replicate that diet.

Parrots are as intelligent as chimpanzees and dolphins. These sentient, curious creatures need toys and mental stimulation. There are puzzle toys for parrots, where they have to work to get food treats. Color is important to parrots, who can see color variations that humans can't. Most of all, parrots need interaction every day.

Clark says one of her friends likes to point out that cleaning cages isn't much fun in the second decade. These sensitive, complex animals have needs that don't diminish for years. It's a pact between human and bird that is hard to keep.

Try "recycling": The average parrot will go through about five homes in its lifetime. Rather than buy a baby, advocates suggest getting a "recycled" bird.

The birds available through adoption groups are stunning in their beauty. Many are very tame and loving. The Exotic Bird Rescue of Oregon Web site has a rainbow of birds available, from animals well-suited to first-time bird owners to ones that are better in experienced hands.

"There's an advantage to adopting an older bird. They've gone through sexual maturity and leveled out. There are no hidden surprises," Wilhelmi says. "Plus, you know you're doing the responsible thing."

Exotic Bird Rescue helps people find the right birds for their homes. The group requires people to attend a bird behavior class, does home visits and gives the bird and human a chance to meet a few times before the bird goes home. There is support for behavior issues that may come up. If the bird doesn't work out, the group will issue a refund.

That's a bargain for both bird and human.

Macaws in the wild: Jack Devine wants people to see the "real macaws" -- in the wild where they belong. The Macaw Landing Web site, www.macawlanding.org, has links to an eco-tourism group that supports bird habitats and indigenous people in those areas. He says it's a great alternative to buying a bird from a breeder or store.

"If you can afford to buy a macaw and cage, you can afford to go see them in their native habitats," he says. "Once you see these birds in the wild, you never want to see them in a cage again."

The passing of Pickwick

2006-06-18T19:28:00.000+10:00

Hi- my name is Steph from Australia- My budgie Pickwick passed away yeasterday- 17th June 2006. I got him for my 7th birthday, i'm now 18- so that would have made him 11 or 12 years old. We had no signs that he was going to die- he was acting normal when i changed his seed for him the night before- he was running around his cage like a maniac- like usual- because he always got excited when i fed him- he loved his food. The next morning- my dad told me that Pickwick hadn't moved from the bottom of his cage- i had a look- it just looked like he was sleeping in the corner. Pickwick survived cats trying to get at his cage, possums crawling over it, and my brothers accidently hitting cricket balls into his cage. He was the cutest thing ever, he was a beautiful bright yellow and he looked the cutest in winter when he ruffled his feathers up. I miss him already- some friends have said- "he's only a bird" but i had him for more than half my life.

my happy cockatiel with Hanging Playgym Kit

2006-06-15T17:20:00.000+10:00

I recently ordered your *Hanging Playgym Kit i ordered it because i had purchased a new bigger cage for my cockatiel, he has a large cage before but because we live in a tiny studio apartment with two cats we aren't able to let Frankie out of his cage as much as i feel he should be able to, so i wanted him to be able to fly and move around more, after i ordered the cage i realized he would need more perches and stuff so i decided to get the gym and wow as always with products i have ordered from you.
it arrived here in California amazingly fast considering how far it had to travel. i used most of the perches and things in the kit to make various swings at different levels in the new cage and was able to tie the in ways where some moved more than others trying to mimic how branches in a tree might move in the wind, since Frankie has been in his new cage he is much calmer and happier it is really amazing what a difference it has made, he was already a fairly calm and happy cockatiel but now he is much more so, he sings happy songs and talks to the birds outside and when he is in the same room as me we have long conversations of whistling sounds together it is very nice, I'm positive a large part of his happiness comes from having a set up that is closer to what he would have if he was a wild tiel down under. he also loves the nuts and pieces of branches i strung all around, and one of the loose nuts has become a favorite cat toy, the kitties play soccer (football) with it every night before crashing thank you very much -bug***

More members needed

2006-06-11T15:01:00.000+10:00

BIRD lovers in Melbourne’s south east want to ruffle Greater Dandenong residents’ feathers in a bid to unearth new members.

The south-eastern branch of the Victorian Cockatiel and Aviary Bird Society has met for more than four years in Dandenong but to this day has never had a Greater Dandenong member.

Branch president Graeme Mayes said the south-eastern wing of the society had about 25 members from neighbouring suburbs such as Hastings and Cranbourne, but never Dandenong.

“About 15 years ago, I got a couple of cockatiels when I was living in New South Wales, and I started from there,” he said.

“But the only club here then was in Morwell.”

Mr Mayes and a group of dedicated bird lovers established the south-eastern branch and decided Dandenong was the most central location to meet.

Since then, dedicated bird lovers such as Dingley’s Brian Higginbothom, 54, have bred cockatiels, budgies, finches and other types of birds.

Mr Higginbothom said he bred cockatiels and currently had about 150 in his aviary. Both Mr Mayes and Mr Higginbothom said they had an interest in birds because they not only made great pets, but were a challenge to breed.

“I just enjoy having them and breeding colours and mutations over the years,” Mr Higginbothom said.

The south-eastern branch of the Victorian Cockatiel and Aviary Bird Society will hold its next meeting at the Dandenong Neighbourhood House on Tuesday, 13 June.

Contact Graeme Mayes on 5979 3742 for more information.

Animal farm comes alive

2006-05-18T22:57:00.000+10:00

MOSSGIEL Park Primary School has hatched plans to teach students about the raising and caring of animals.The Endeavour Hills school has operated a small farm for some years to provide students with real life learning about animals.The farm has budgies, finches, canaries, cockatiels, 20 Isa brown point of lay pullets, two ewes and four baby lambs, two of which were born amid much excitement last Friday.School principal John Wall said prep students were learning about life cycles and animals this year and had been taking care of some baby chicks in their classroom.The students have had an incubator in their rooms over the past two weeks and have watched the chickens hatch from eggs and have been caring for their new feathered and fluffy friends since then.Mr Wall said the chickens shared many of their classroom activities and the children make daily observations about their size and growth rate, feeding requirements and the need for clean drinking water.But most of all Mr Wall said they had experienced the fun of learning from real life.

These Retirees Flock Together In Snowbird Land

2006-05-02T21:04:00.000+10:00

The Oasis Sanctuary is far from the largest retirement community in the Arizona desert, but it is certainly the noisiest.
Along with the morning sun each day, there climbs a riotous opera of screeches, shrieks and squawks along with the occasional wolf whistle, "What's up?" and "I love you."
Tucked in a remote river valley, separated from Tucson by an enormous mountain range, the sanctuary is a "life care facility" for nearly 450 parrots, cockatoos, macaws and other tropical birds.
With life spans that for some species can be 80 years or longer, many of the birds have outlived their human caretakers. Others reached the end of their productivity as commercial breeders. Most were deemed too ornery or skittish for adoption as pets and faced euthanasia.
"Nobody wants these older birds," said Sybil Erden, who founded the sanctuary in 1998, noting that a parrot can take months or years to recover from losing a companion. "People call and say, `We've had a bird for two months, and it just doesn't like us.' "
Erden's goal is definitely not to socialize birds for another try with people. "We're helping them learn to have bird friends," she said. "Some of them have a hard time understanding that they are birds."
Still, the enduring imprint of owners past, of decades spent in someone's living room or kitchen, was abundantly audible on a walk through the sanctuary grounds.
Billy, a yellow-naped Amazon, delivered the extended monologue that staff members call a "one-sided phone conversation."
"Hello," he said as a visitor approached and then continued with considered pauses between phrases: "Uh huh." "Yeah." "OK." "Then what happened?"
Erden opened the sanctuary in Phoenix but moved to this larger isolated location along the San Pedro River six years ago. It occupies an old pecan orchard, miles up a bumpy dirt road, through a rocky landscape of prickly pear cactus and thorny mesquites.
Sharing one aviary are some racing pigeons that had faced doom because they could no longer find their way home. The cherry-headed conure named Mingus and two other refugees from the feral flock made famous by the 2003 documentary "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill" are also here.
Two well-trained dogs protect the birds from coyotes and bobcats.
The larger birds are usually paired in rows of large veranda-covered cages while some, mainly smaller species, inhabit two larger aviaries where they flock and fly, getting closer to their natural state. Erden hopes to build 10 more aviaries.
Many parrots are monogamous, bonding for life with another bird or, in homes, with a human. A priority is helping them find a new companion. Self-chosen, companions are not necessarily of the same sex or species.
The birds' mimicking skills are sometimes so acute that it is hard not to impute humanlike reasoning. As Erden approached Stinkerbelle, a Quaker parrot, the bird cried out, "No, no, no!" pecked Erden's finger and mockingly screamed, "Ha, ha, ha, ha!"
The last thing the sanctuary wants is to produce offspring. Sometimes the birds are seen having sex. But without appropriate nesting sites, they seldom lay eggs, and when they do, ceramic eggs are substituted until the parents lose interest.
Even as she works to expand and improve the sanctuary, whose $250,000-a-year operating budget is financed by donations, Erden worries about a potential flood of unwanted parrots as pet-owning baby boomers become infirm.
"We're getting more calls from people in their 60s and 70s," she said. "We don't see an end to the problem."

Parakeets and Budgies

2006-04-25T13:21:00.000+10:00

Parakeets are parrots. Most small parrots, with pointed tails, are typically referred to as parakeets. When we talk about parakeets in the United States, we are most often referring to a specific species of parrot called a Budgerigar. Budgerigars are known to the rest of the world as "budgies." In 1840, budgies were imported to England from Australia. In exchange for the birds, England sent Australia convicts. The English immediately fell in love with these friendly, cute, spirited little birds. The Brits rewarded the birds' friendliness by capturing thousands more of them from the wild and imprisoning them in cages.
Fortunately for the wild birds, the budgie-exporting craze didn't last long, because it was soon discovered that budgies would easily breed in captivity. Captive breeding provided millions of birds for Woolworth's and spinster aunts all over the world. Wild budgies have green bodies, checkered backs and a yellow face. Evidently, that look wasn't good enough for the breeders, because they soon went about trying to improve on nature. Over the years, many flavors of budgies have been produced, including gray, blue, yellow, violet and tons of colors in between. Once, even bright red budgies were imported from breeders in India. The British couldn't figure out how the Indians were able to breed red birds, until the red birds began to molt. It turns out the Indian birds weren't red at all, but had simply spent the afternoon at the hairdresser. Yes, it was a dye job. Once the molt began and the birds weren't able to touch up their roots, the jig was up.

The wild Budgerigars are native to the grasslands of Australia, where they fly in large flocks. The name Budgerigar comes from an Aborigine word meaning "good meal." When the Aborigines came upon a tree filled with roosting budgies, they would snag a few and roast them on the evening's fire. One of the earliest known Aussie fast foods was fresh budgie on a stick.
Most North American songbirds breed in the spring, but budgies don't follow the seasons like our birds - they breed based upon food supply. Much of Australia's interior is dry and whenever rain does arrive it produces wild grasses and other seed-producing plants that budgies love. At the first sign of rain, the birds stop what they are doing and shift into breeding mode.
Typically, birds don't set on their eggs until all the eggs are laid. They do this in order for all the eggs to hatch at once, so the young birds grow and fledge at the same time. Budgies, on the other hand, never have a reliable food supply. They can't afford to waste time. They start incubating as soon as the first egg is laid. The baby birds that hatch-out first are fed first, while the later hatching birds have to wait for whatever food is left. This way at least a few offspring survive if the food source dries up. It's a cruel but necessary method for raising young. Perhaps, this may explain why, when I was growing up, I was always much thinner than my older sister

Scraming is for the birds, namely parrots

2006-04-01T10:43:00.000+11:00

She used to just squeal and chirp and squeak and burp like a tiny feathered sailor. She used to just make adorable little noises like a moderately hyperactive little monkey holding a banana, looking at the sky and talking to the clouds.
But not anymore. Now, the SO's African gray parrot Anaya -- 1 foot tall with 2 feet of wingspan and 1 solid pound of tiny-boned flesh, and cuter than a drunken squirrel -- this bird, now nearly 2 years old and maturing a bit and moving away from her fledgling awkward vocal confusions and into a more adult phase of happy confident incessant noisedom, has learned to scream. Like a girl. Exactly like a girl. And also chat on the phone. Sometimes at the same time.
Parrots, you should know right now, are enormously weird. Surreal. They bring with them a bizarre sense of wild and unfamiliar nature, and you cannot feed them or watch them move or preen or and waddle awkwardly down the hall without this sense of trippy otherness; you cannot hold a parrot in your hand and stroke their funky, tiny, pencil-thin neck bones and not feel like you are in the presence of something just a little out of the human range of cosmic understanding. Personally, I think it's the wings that do it. Or the black tongue inside that shockingly powerful beak. Or the eyes, black and sharp and eternally vigilant.
I am here to tell you, large parrots make for the most fascinating of pets, entirely rewiring what you think a barely domesticated creature is supposed to do because they so easily flout and mock any and all of the things a dog, cat or hamster would do -- which is to say, they can talk, they can read your meek little human mind, they will only get angry if you get angry and will only laugh and shrug and nip at your feeble attempts at punishment and will stare at you in utter unblinking fascination as you have sex -- because large parrots and especially large African gray parrots are: a) preternaturally smart, b) creepily observant and c) neurotic as a Jewish comedian on meth.
Plus, of course, parrots mimic. Especially grays. Especially well. They are legendary for it. Did I mention they can live for 50 years? And that this bird isn't even 2? It's a long haul, baby. You'd better love the bird thing. Otherwise, it's all "Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill," you know?
In fact, the weird-crazy-beautiful parrot Anaya is sitting on my shoulder as I write this, right now. She is making strange gurgling noises to accompany the Arctic Monkeys. Also, smooches and wolf whistles and long, sustained raspy sounds like pineapple being dragged across a cheese grater for 10 solid seconds. This is normal. This is to be expected. After a while, you barely notice and the SO and I can be watching TV or talking in the living room and the bird will be yammering away in her own little world, conversing with the spirits for a solid half hour, and unless she chimes in with a crystal-clear "I love you" or "Hello" or "What's up?" you just sort of tune it out the way a parent, I imagine, tunes out the sounds of the children imbibing lighter fluid and stabbing each other with little plastic forks.
Unless, of course, she screams. The screaming is new. It is piercing and startling and, well, surprisingly cute, probably because it sounds exactly (and I do mean exactly) like my girlfriend.
See, parrots go through phases of mimicry as their tongues and brains and observational skills develop, and this particular bird has recently added to her astounding orchestral repertoire the exact same high-pitched, ear-rattling, neighbor-alerting yelp emitted when I jump out from behind the door to scare my SO (which I do frequently, as a way of keeping the relationship fresh and snappy and ever on the verge of, you know, murder). It is, in a word, uncanny. Hilarious. Adorable. The screaming, I mean. And, I suppose, the girlfriend.
She will scream without provocation (the bird, but also the girlfriend). She will scream as part of her normal, twice-daily verbal gymnastics wherein she runs through every noise she knows and rearranges them on the fly, like her own built-in GarageBand. She will scream when you leave the room. She will scream when you enter the room. She will scream whenever she hears a woman scream on TV, a sort of scream-a-têt. Thankfully, she does not scream so often, or so loudly, that we have to consider duct tape and a sedative.
But, then again, screaming is not her favorite thing. Not by a long shot. For that, we have the telephone.
Parrots, as I said, are terrifically weird. Parrots are highly unpredictable. Parrots attach to random things and are utterly freaked out and terrified by other random things (Example: Wave a big broom in front of Anaya and she just looks at you and rolls those tiny black eyes and yawns. But bring a simple toothbrush within 5 feet of her, and she will jump, flap her wings and growl like you're a drunken Dick Cheney carrying a shotgun), and there is little explanation for it. Telephones are, for now, just her thing.
She is amazed by them. You will be talking and laughing and muttering into the handset, and the bird is leaning way in and cocking her head sideways and watching every ... single ... syllable ... as it passes your lips. She is absolutely mesmerized. She is taking it all in. Recording. Studying. Analyzing.
Hence, she can now imitate, with freakish precision, the exact tone and cadence of the ring of my SO's home phone. She will ring the phone two or three times, answer it with the exact same beep as the on button, say, "Hello, how are you?" in pitch-perfect girlfriend intonation, proceed to have a full conversation in human-pitched bird gibberish (with all appropriate pauses and cadences), say, "OK, OK, bye-bye," and hang up with another perfect beep. She will do this over and over again. All day long.
Parrots happily, effortlessly smack around your normal perceptions. Parrots make you look at the world anew, every single day, perhaps more than any other sort of pet, though I've never owned a potbellied pig or a miniature pony or a three-toed Republican, so I can't speak with absolute authority. In fact, we don't even know for sure if Anaya is male or female (requires a special blood test we have yet to get around to) and so in about six years, if she lays an egg, we will know for sure.
Hopefully, she will scream when it happens. And so, probably, will we. How much fun is that?

Feathered fascination

2006-03-27T12:10:00.000+11:00

Carroll Myers uses a firm but gentle grasp as he places one of his English budgerigars into a show cage. The male bird quickly finds a spot on one of the two perches and, with no prompting from Myers, puffs its plumage in a display of confidence. He knows it's time to show off.Eagle Myers is a nationally known budgie breeder and judge who got started after seeing an ad for the birds. "I gotta have a few of those," he said.
Meanwhile, about 400 birds in crisp whites, cool blues and vibrant greens waddle on perches in Myers' custom 1,000-square-foot aviary.
His fascination with breeding and showing English budgerigars started two decades ago as a hobby and has evolved into a passion that takes him all over the United States. He has won dozens of awards at regional and national budgie shows.
"It's the fact you want to raise something, and raise something better. You're trying to build a bigger, better bird," he said.
The English budgerigar, also known as a budgie, is a larger cousin of the common parakeet. The bird is native to Australia and in its native habitat has a bright-green body and black-and-yellow wings.
Myers, who also runs a cattle ranch, said his interest in budgies stems from his work with the cows that roam his property near Navasota. "I enjoy the cows because I enjoy the genetic aspect of breeding. It's the same thing with the budgies. The genetics are just unbelievable."
Myers said there are 23 varieties of budgies. Breeding different birds results in vibrant colors that range from cobalt blue to army green. Other birds have "cinnamon" colors, budgie talk for pastels.
To assist in the breeding process, he tracks each bird's lineage with a special computer program. That way he can find birds and breed a couple with particular strengths such as colors or spot patterns.
Myers' fascination with budgies doesn't stop at breeding and showing the birds at contests in Florida, Louisiana, Arizona, California and Colorado.
He also has served as a judge for national shows and is the past chairman of the Budgerigar Association of America.
The ideal bird, Myers said, is about 9 inches long and will stand upright on its perch in a "very regal" position. It has a large head that's almost as wide as its body. Budgerigars are orginally green but through breeding take on many other colors and color patterns.
Myers was introduced to the birds in 1990 by a friend in Houston who was moving. He had about 75 American parakeets, Myers said, and couldn't take them.
Myers agreed to watch the birds and, as he learned more about them, became more interested.
Soon after, he came across a newspaper ad for an English budgerigar show in Houston and decided to go.
The attraction was instant.
Today, Myers is a nationally known budgie breeder. He fields about five calls a week from prospective buyers across the country; they'll pay $50 to $1,000 per bird depending on the rarity of its color.
But vibrant colors don't always make a star show bird. Aside from physical characteristics, Myers said you can tell whether a certain budgie feels comfortable in the spotlight.
"We look for birds that have spunk, showmanship and good color. See how that one is shy and goes to the back of the cage? A good 'show bird' comes up to you and puffs up its head. Some just naturally like to show off."

Young Rescues

2006-03-12T14:53:00.000+11:00

I rescued a very young (based on internet reserch he was maybe 4 months old) male budgie this past New Year's Eve. I live in Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada and this little budgie was outside on a store sidewalk in minus fourteen degree freezing cold weather. He allowed himself to be caught and from that moment on lives with me!!! I've attached 2 pictures!! The pictures were taken the day after he was rescued!! The pink perch in one picture came with the cage, I threw it out.

I have always had finches. I have 2 pale hooded munias right now. My new budgie "Kiwi" is my first and only budgie. I bought him a mirror and he loves it. He feeds it, sleeps by it. I would prefer to buy another budgie so he's not alone, but I'm not sure if I should do this because he has his mirror. And if I should (and would prefer to) how do I introduce a new budgie???? I do not trust anyone in my area who knows birds for their advice.

Dear Dr. Fox:

2006-03-12T14:46:00.000+11:00

Q: I have two parakeets — a male, Sparky, and a female, Sparrow. Sparky has been eating the perch covers. I change them all the time. In the cage, I have a mirror square, cuttlebone, tropical-fruit-blend seeds, gravel, a bird swing, water and other toys. Sparky has a strong voice and is always singing. Is he lacking some vitamin? Please advise.

L.W., Hollywood, Fla.

Dear L.W.:

A: Sparky is probably playing, and his tearing up the perch covers is more a sign of wanting some material to shred and manipulate than a sign of some nutritional deficiency. Give him some unbleached paper towels or clean hay or straw to play with.

It sounds as though your birds are well cared for, and the real plus is that they have each other. So many caged birds live a solitary existence, and I think it is a widespread and unrecognized deprivation and form of cruelty.

I hope your birds have the opportunity to get out of their cages and can flit and hop around in a safe room or porch.

As for diet, avoid a seed mix too high in millet, which can lead to obesity and thyroid problems. While millet is higher in carbohydrates than other seeds, and budgies thrive on it, some seed variety is advisable. Thyroid problems may be prevented by giving the birds pieces of nori (thin sheets of seaweed) that they will enjoy playing with.

Seaweed is an excellent source of essential trace minerals. Adding a little flaxseed to your birdseed mix will provide important essential fatty acids. Ideally, the seed mix should be organically certified.

The fact that Sparky sings means he's happy and you are a good bird parent.

DR. MICHAEL FOX

Birds workshop in Moora

2006-03-10T21:35:00.000+11:00

BIRDS Australia is to hold an information workshop focusing on habitat revegetation in Moora on Tuesday March 21 as part of Conservation Week.
Western Australia's Wheatbelt, located in the Southwest Botanical Province, is home to a diverse mixture of plants and animals.
This unique area has been classified as a biological hotspot because it is an area of extreme biological diversity with a high level of degradation.
The Wheatbelt has been cleared of 70 per cent of its original habitat, leaving remnants of natural bush scattered across the landscape.
This is called fragmentation. These areas have now become invaluable to the animals that inhabit them, such as Carnaby's Black-Cockatoo.
Birds Australia is coordinating the Carnaby's Black-Cockatoo Recovery Project.
This project aims at conserving, protecting and increasing Carnaby's Cockatoo habitat; predominately bush types known as Eucalypt Woodlands and Kwongan Heathlands.
Birds Australia plans to achieve this by working with the community and revegetating known nesting and feeding areas and creating corridors of vegetation between the two areas.
The project's Regional Coordinator, Helen Pitman, said habitat loss was a major concern for the species.
"If a male Carnaby's Cockatoo has to fly further than 12km between nesting and feeding areas to provide food for the female and a chick, then the likelihood of the pair successfully raising that chick is low," she said.

Amazonian Parakeets Live With Humans

2006-03-10T17:05:00.000+11:00

This is a Canary-winged Parakeet (also called White-winged Parakeet, although this race lacks white along the yellow edging of the wing), locally known by its Spanish name Periquito Aliamarillo. This is a wild bird brought into a tame relation -- that is, turned into a commensal with people.

Domesticated parrots and parakeets are common in many parts of the world, but it is unusual for this species and in this place.

This parakeet is found along the Amazon River and some of its tributaries. We are in a very remote corner of the Upper Amazon River Basin in northeastern Bolivia, close to the border with Brazil, in a tiny native village called Porvenir along the Rio Paragua, a distant tributary of the Amazon.

Canary-winged Parakeets inhabit open forests and savannahs, as well as seasonally flooded forests and river islands. This one has taken to a forest clearing here in the dense seasonal jungles of the Amazon, and is now a friend of a local villager.

Avian bird flu

2006-03-04T12:05:00.000+11:00

I am getting very concerned at budgie owners who are having their pet birds put down in fear of catching the bird flu.

It was pleasing to read DR JIM ROBERTSON, PRINCIPAL SCIENTIST FOR THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR BIOLOGICAL STANDARDS AND CONTROL answer to questions namely

What should be done with regard to having budgies in an outside aviary and other pet birds in aviaries?

The risk of such birds becoming infected, even if the UK's wild bird population were infected, is very small.

The budgies or pet birds would need to make contact with infected, wild birds or their droppings.

Whilst this is possible, from infected birds flying over the aviaries, the risk is very small.

As a precaution and in the event of avian influenza reaching the UK such birds should be brought indoors or the aviary proofed against wild birds and their droppings.

Bird flu: Your questions answered

Parrots mock nature's normal colour scheme

2006-02-26T20:42:00.000+11:00

The conventional wisdom in the avian kingdom is that females are dowdy because their job keeps them near the nest rearing the young while the need to pull partners and scare off rivals has male birds sporting colourful plumage.

Eclectus parrots, a threatened species that lives in Australia's far north, are exceptions to that rule.

The males are green and the females are a snazzy combination of red and blue. In fact, the boys and girls are so different that it was initially thought they were different species.

"There is no other bird like it," the Australian National University's Robert Heinsohn told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Heinsohn has studied eclectus parrots for eight years. He believes that lifestyle and not gender is key determining factor to their odd marking.

Female of the Eclectus roratus species spend almost all their time near the nest. Their brilliant red and blue helps frighten off hawks and other parrots.

The males, who roam farther, have a green that is easy for other parrots to spot. The green also serves as a camouflage against the green forest canopy where they forage. -

Bird people risk parrot fever

2006-01-29T19:04:00.000+11:00

Karen Cronje and Stefanie Hefer share their home in Tamboerskloof, Cape Town, with Jimmy, Kuifie, Pepito, Piet, Patrys, Simon, Bridget and several others who prefer to remain nameless - an exuberant and beloved collection of parrots, parakeets, cockatiels, budgies and finches, who, up until a few weeks ago, were only a source of delight and interest to their owners.

Stefanie explains that they'd noticed one of their African Greys, Beatrix, had been looking a bit poorly. "We'd been keeping her indoors for a few days to shelter her from the winter weather. She just wasn’t herself. She’d lost weight and eventually stopped eating. Then one evening she literally just keeled over. I tried to breathe air into her mouth, but she was gone. It was a real loss - I sobbed my heart out."

Stefanie took Beatrix to a bird disease specialist to find out what had caused her – very – premature death: African Greys live into their eighties, and Beatrix had only been five or six years old. The post mortem showed that Beatrix's lungs were completely perforated; she had literally suffocated to death. The veterinarian diagnosed avian chlamydiosis, a serious infection in birds, and immediately packed Karen and Stefanie off to their GP to be tested for psittacosis.

What are psittacosis and avian chlamydiosis?
Psittacosis, also known as 'parrot fever' or ornithosis, is a disease humans can contract from birds infected with Chlamydophila psittaci, a bacterial-type organism.

Flu-like symptoms usually appear about five to 14 days after exposure to C. psitaci, and may include fever, chills, headache, tiredness, sore muscles, a dry cough, breathing difficulty and chest tightness. The severity of the disease ranges from no obvious symptoms to severe pneumonia and even death.

Parrot fever may be particularly dangerous for the elderly, immunocompromised people and pregnant women, especially if complicated by other respiratory problems.

In birds, C. psittaci infection is called avian chlamydiosis. Infected birds shed the organism in their faeces and respiratory tract secretions, and humans can become infected from exposure to these. The most usual means of infection is by inhaling microbes that have entered the air from dried faeces or secretions. Other means of exposure include mouth-to-beak contact and handling infected birds.

Watch out for parrot fever in caged birds
C. psittaci occurs most commonly in psittacine (parrot-type) birds, like cockatiels, parakeets, parrots and macaws, although it has been found in many bird species. Among other caged birds, infection occurs most frequently in pigeons and doves.

Andrew Whitelaw, a microbiologist at the University of Cape Town, says that internationally, it is estimated that about 5-8% of caged birds are infected.

Most human cases result from exposure to pet birds. Other people at risk include:

* bird breeders,
* workers in poultry plants,
* veterinarians and veterinary technicians,
* laboratory workers handling infected birds or tissues
* farmers
* zoo workers and animal rehabilitators.

Human infection can sometimes even result from brief exposure to infected birds or materials, in people who don't keep or work with birds.

Person-to-person transmission, although it can't be ruled out completely as a possibility, has never been proven, so it’s not necessary to take elaborate precautions against infecting others if you have the illness.

15-20% fatality rate
Doctors take Psittacosis very seriously - and with good reason. Without treatment, the fatality rate in humans is 15-20%. With timely, appropriate antibiotic treatment, however, risk of death drops to less than 1%. Symptoms usually start to improve after two to three days of treatment, but relapse can occur, and it's very important to complete the full course of antibiotics and report any recurrence of symptoms to your doctor.

It is difficult to grow a culture from C. psittaci in the laboratory, and it can take several days to get a clear result. Karen and Stefanie's GP therefore didn't wait to put them on a 10-day course of doxycycline, the antibiotic of choice for treating this infection. All the surviving birds in the household were put on antibiotics too.

As it turned out, the test came back positive for both Karen and Stefanie. They had been experiencing symptoms even before Beatrix's death, but hadn't thought for a moment that these were connected. Psittacosis is often mistaken for other respiratory conditions like flu or bronchitis, because the symptoms are similar.

Says Karen: "We both had symptoms, but they didn't seem unusual, especially in the middle of the Cape winter. I had bronchitis for which I was taking antibiotics – but then I'd had bronchitis before. The one unusual symptom I'd had was headaches, which I normally never get. I also had a fever and a blocked nose.”

Stefanie had been having breathing difficulty. “I felt like I had a ton of bricks on my chest, which was something I’d never experienced before, and I was struggling to breathe. I’ve also been wheezing, coughing, feeling congested, as well as generally really tired.”

Karen and Stefanie’s symptoms are now starting to clear up, and the rest of the flock show no signs of illness. They are adamant they will remain confirmed 'bird people'.

“Lots of people have said: ‘So are you going to get rid of your birds now?’ But the answer is: No, of course not! We love our birds dearly, and don’t feel any resentment towards them because we got this infection. It’s not as if it’s their fault.”

How to protect yourself and your birds

* If you buy a bird, do so only from a reputable breeder or pet shop that maintains high standards of cleanliness and doesn't keep birds under crowded conditions.
* Choose a bird that appears healthy (although this is no guarantee it is free from infection).
* “Once you’ve bought the bird, take it immediately to a vet (not home first) you trust, for a thorough check-up,” says Dr Anel Coetzee, a veterinarian with Tygerberg Animal Hospital who specialises in birds.
* Maintain good hygiene. Clean all cages, food bowls, and water bowls at least once a day. Don’t allow litter and faeces to accumulate. Soiled bowls should be emptied, thoroughly cleaned and rinsed before reuse.
* Between occupancies by different birds, cages should be thoroughly scrubbed with soap and water, disinfected and rinsed.
* Make sure the space you keep your birds is well-ventilated.
* As with all pets, wash your hands well after handling them. Kissing your birds and feeding them from your mouth is not a good idea.
* Protect birds from undue stress (e.g. crowding, relocation and cold) and malnutrition. This lowers their resistance to infection. Dr Coetzee says that incorrect feeding is a major cause and predisposing factor in a number of conditions: “Feed your birds pellets, not seeds; seeds are a ‘death diet’ that leads to malnutrition.”
* If you’re going away, don’t board your birds where there are others – rather get someone in to look after them. Also, says Dr Coetzee, don’t take in stray birds and house them with your resident birds.
* Get to know your bird. If you’re familiar with all its quirks and foibles, you’re much more likely to notice a change in behaviour or appearance that could signal disease. Signs of avian chlamydiosis (and of several other bird diseases) include lethargy, appetite loss, weight loss, and ruffled feathers, discharge from the eyes or nostrils area, diarrhoea or unusual faeces e.g. loose green stools.
* If you or your bird are diagnosed with the infection, inform everyone who has had recent contact with your bird, and suggest they get tested – especially if they’ve been experiencing symptoms.

Olivia Rose-Innes, Health24.com

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