Parrot Monitoring on Palm Beach 2011

Yesterday RSCF staff members Dr. Paul Reillo, Dr. PJ Deitschel, Danielle Payne and Karen McGovern headed over to Palm Beach to check in on the ferel population of Green Cheek Amazons that live there.  The colony is doing extremely well, and RSCF has been checking in on six active nest cavities this season.  We weighed and examined eight chicks, banding four with colorful identification bands, then returned them safely to their nest cavities.  All the chicks we examined were healthy and robust!  We also filmed inside several nests, using a camera system designed by RSCF that uses a one-inch infa-red camera attached to the end of an extending 50-foot pole.  We got some great footage of adults with eggs and chicks.

It is wonderful to see so many active and healthy nests.  The flock is indeed doing well this year!

Babies!

Here's a quick slideshow of the latest photos taken of our five 2011 Red Browed Amazon babies.  Less than a month old, already showing feather pins and color!  Quite a lovely bunch...Below the slideshow is a video of the babies enjoying lunch.  Boy, can they eat!!

2010 Babies!!

We thought you would like to see some photos of this year's baby red-browed Amazon parrots. The "Fantastic Five" are now fully weaned and living most of the time in their new flight cage. We bring them inside during the hottest part of the late afternoon and overnight. Soon they will be completely acclimated to thier new enclosure and will stay out full time. When we bring them inside, they are usually hot and tired. So, you will see in the last few photos that they enjoy a good bath to cool off!

We will soon know the sex of each bird, we sent off some feathers for DNA sexing just last week. We'll keep you posted!

Parrotphenalia

It has been a crazy few days, folks. Began last Thursday when RSCF staff visited a local feral population of green-cheek Amazon parrots. These birds are originally from Mexico, and are now endangered. The wild population in Florida is derived from escaped imports dating back to the 1940s. These birds are now an important group, one of the largest wild populations left. We (RSCF) have been studying this group for years, filming within nest cavities using a telescoping camera probe, banding babies, etc. We estimate up to 200 birds may be in this group. Every year we monitor nest cavities, which are in Australian pine trees. Last Thursday we discovered one of the active nests (had two babies in it) was empty...with a wire trap in the tree. The babies had been poached (stolen from the nest). WHAT A MESS! The trap was well-made, the thief obviously has done this before. Devestating loss to the flock and the police were called, reports made, and eventually the story hit the local press. We've been on the phone ever since.

Monday we got a call from a local pet shop--they had the babies. Someone tried to sell them to the shop, but the owners knew better and refused to buy them. Faced with the prospect of having to care for wild, baby parrots no one would buy, the thief simply left them at the pet shop, and then the owners contacted us. So, the happy ending is that we have the babies--tired, skinny and hungry. They are not fully flighted and cannot eat seed yet. We are hand-feeding them three times a day. We hope to rehabilitate them quickly (within a month or so) so we can return them to the flock before they leave the area (usually around the end of July). If we miss that window they will have to remain in captivity until the flock returns next year to breed (usually around April).

It breaks my heart to see these birds in a cage, and I am so disgusted by the entire event. Why must we constantly try to put a dollar value on wildlife? If the pet shop owners hadn't been decent, understanding people, these birds would have spent their lives trapped in a cage, miserable. What gives humans the right to take wild animals of any kind and force them into a life imprisoned for our amusement? Why can't we appreciate wildlife as it is naturally? I can tell you from personal experience, nothing compares to seeing a parrot in full flight, in the forest, screaming its lungs out as it flies FREE. I can only hope that humans can learn to appreciate wild animals in wild places, not in cages and pens, not as PERSONAL PROPERTY.

These babies have a chance now, we will do all we can to get them fat, happy and FLYING with the flock as soon as possible. We'll keep you posted...