PARROTS

Parrots are a bird to be reckoned with. One person I know says they are the crown of creation, outranking humans. After all, some live longer than most of us, they can speak foreign languages (such as English and other human tongues), and are intelligent enough to have a measurable IQ by human standards. The wild parrots of Telegraph Hill in San Francisco have been featured in films, but many other parrot communities exist all over the United States. Etaoqua, a Mohican woman, and a few other Natives from New York have stated that before the coming of the white man, parrots and other flamboyant birds were common in the state. Etaoqua says the Pennacook (conventionally translated as “at the bottom of the hill”) of the Merrimack River valley in New Hampshire and Massachusetts are also called the bird tribe of the Mohicannuk (traditional name of the Mohican) Confederacy, because, while pen means “hill,” pin means “bird” in Mohican. Algonquian place and tribal names often have many layers of meaning; the language lends itself to word play and ambiguity, which is a great source of pride and enjoyment for these highly verbal people. There is a legend that they are called the bird tribe because they “come from another planet”; however, this has yet to be confirmed by anthropologists and historians.

Table Talk

Parrots are among the most sensitive of birds, and according to Native Americans from many eastern nations, they were originally North American as well as South American citizens. Parrots love freedom and only pull out their own feathers when in captivity. Etaoqua says that the Mohican have stories and legends about parrots and were familiar with multicolored birds before contact with Europeans. The Nissequogue say the same thing. Parrots can also ruff their feathers to an almost horizontal position when they are on the defensive. This can make them appear twice their normal size, in order to discourage predators.13

A down-to-earth woman I know named Victoria loves animals and birds. She has lived with a lilac-crowned Amazon parrot for twenty-eight years. The parrot was not restricted to a cage, but sometimes sat on a perch, a piece of furniture, or Victoria’s shoulder. One day after a death in the family, Victoria was sitting at the table crying. The parrot was perched on the other end of the table. The parrot walked across the table and placed her foot [hand?] on top of Victoria’s hand and held it there for a while. The parrot had a lot to say most of the time, but this was the first time Victoria had cried in the presence of the bird, and the first time the parrot had made this universal inter-species gesture of “I understand” and moved to console the human. At times like these, no words need to be spoken—even between parrots and people.

Parrots Are Our Friends (Perry the Parrot)

Lindsay, who has long been a part of Ottawa’s Native community, recently lost a friend of almost twenty-five years. He was a parrot named Perry, a mitred conure from Peru. Lindsay and his wife, Sandy, rescued the bird in the fall of 1985 from a careless owner, who had mistreated him more out of ignorance than malice.

For the first month, Perry wouldn’t allow anyone to get close, until Lindsay reached into the cage one day and touched him on the nose. It would have been hard to guess who was more surprised. The bird then decided that Lindsay was all right, and a friendship blossomed.

Perry adopted Lindsay as family and would regurgitate half-digested food for him, as a mother bird would do for a chick. Lindsay appreciated the thought, but didn’t really wish to accept the honor. Perry figured this out, and then just went through the motions, eating the birdie porridge himself.

Perry was smart and had a sense of humor, a sense of the fun, funny, and incongruous. He was very playful; he would stick his head into Lindsay’s mouth like a lion tamer and pull it out again, bobbing with amusement.

Lindsay gradually learned Perry’s language and behavior. In the last two years of his life, the bird decided that he wanted to know more about his person. He would sit on Lindsay’s knee, studying him intently. Lindsay would affectionately grasp Perry’s beak between his thumb and forefinger. Perry ultimately returned the gesture by holding Lindsay’s nose with his foot.

Perry even taught himself to laugh: When Lindsay was reading something humorous or watching a television comedy and would chuckle, Perry would join in with his own little “cluck-cluck-cluck.” This was just imitation at first. However, he soon understood the context. He would do something on his own that he regarded as funny and accompany it with a happy “cluck-cluck-cluck.”

Perry was so much more than this. In the end, the bird and the man had become inseparable and could “read” each other completely.

Perry passed into the spirit world on July 31, 2010, and left an empty space in the family. The teaching that comes from such special friends is that we are not that different from each other, whether we are a human being, bird, or any of the Creator’s creatures.

Parrot Liberation

Parrots, parakeets, and cockatiels are freedom-loving birds, but they are rarely free of captivity in North America. Almost all of them are store-bought. They try to escape even the best of masters and occasionally succeed. When they do, they tend to find each other and congregate in secret communities in suburban or even urban parks. There is such a park in Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn (and at Brooklyn College, where the monk parakeet has become an unofficial mascot) surprisingly enough. There is also one in Edgewater, New Jersey, where there is an extraordinarily high population of monk parakeets, or Quaker parrots; at least two hundred of them live free of cages but are also forced to find their own food. Members of the family are highly social creatures who groom and preen each other and are accustomed to much physical contact and prolonged attention from each other. The so-called lovebird is a member of the parrot family, so it is not surprising they congregate in such large numbers. As it turns out, kissing is yet another courtship ritual that humans learned from birds, something parrots do in many enthusiastic styles and positions. They share this need for cuddling with their human captors and yet need to break free as well, so by the time they reach Edgewater, they are also watching out for their former owners, who may be lurking in the bushes with butterfly nets, trying to rewin their lost feathered loves. There is some evidence to support a theory that parrots were once indigenous to New York state and the Eastern Seaboard in general. If so, these birds are simply returning to the land their ancestors roamed before the era of pet stores and bird feed.

Alison Evans-Fragale is not only a board member of the Brooklyn Parrot Society but is also the founder of the Edgewater Parrots organization. For the last several years, she has been spearheading a movement to remove the monk parakeet from the New Jersey Potentially Dangerous Species list, a smear on the character of these birds, which have been on the books since the 1970s. On May 22, 2006, Bill A1237 was unanimously passed to remove the name monk parakeet (Quaker parrot) from New Jersey’s most-wanted list, with a vote of 77 to 0, thanks in part to Alison’s grassroots work in getting petitions signed.^*42

The Edgewater parrots live in large nests that range in size from that of a basketball to that of a living-room sofa, the latter of which can accommodate dozens of birds. In the winter, the birds favor nests built around transformer boxes. The state knocks those nests down, saying that they are fire hazards; however, the birds do seem to have trouble with Jersey’s winter weather, which can be harsh, without the warming glow of a transformer box to keep them comfy. Evans-Fragale insists that the nests do not cause transformer fires. At least one such fire was proven to be the result of sabotage; a lit cigarette had been placed in the nest, and monk parakeets are strict nonsmokers. These parrots need clay drawn from cliffs to assist in the digestion of food, and Edgewater is near Cliffside and the Palisades cliffs, which provide plenty of clay.

One cockatiel owner describes how her captive bird likes to hook claws onto a giant rotating fan in her living room and hang upside down, with its chest against the front of the wire mesh of the faceguard. When the fan is on full blast, the small, lightweight bird can lift its wings and start to fly like an eagle without actually going anywhere, except left to right to left, as the great wind machine rotates. The cockatiel can continue with this fantasy for some time, at least until someone unplugs the fan.

Parrots and cockatiels can be cocky, however. One parrot owner, Tina Powell, tells me that her parrot will imitate her voice calling the dog, saying, “Here, Blue! Here puppy!” The puppy comes, and the parrot bites his nose so hard the dog goes running to its owner yelping. Ten minutes later, the same thing will occur again; the dog hears Tina’s voice calling him by name, and the perky puppy, forgetting all about what happened last time, falls into the trap yet again.

Parrots have sensitive lungs and cannot deal with the airborne household toxins we take for granted. Burning an empty Teflon pan on the range breaks down the Teflon and creates a gas that can kill a parrot. The same is true with the Teflon coating on microwave popcorn bags. If you overheat them and burn the popcorn, the Teflon will emit gasses that can kill parrots. Scented candles are also a life-threatening hazard to a parrot. As the candle wax burns, the oils break down to emit the scent, but also other gasses as well, some of which are very harmful to parrots. Chocolate, avocado, and other common foods can be deadly to parrots as well. So before sharing a candlelit dinner of Chinese stir-fry with salad and after-dinner mints followed by popcorn and a movie with your parrot, please consult with your veterinarian.