FEATURE


wouldn’t have stayed with them for so long. The intentions of those working for the refuge were good, it was the politics that caused the problems. I also had to constantly defend


my associations with The Parrot Society, I was asked why I was an area representative for a ‘group of parrot breeders’, (said with a sneer.) I argued that The Parrot Society is a long running, well respected charity that provides information and advice on all aspects of bird keeping, pets included, that the society is involved with and supports many conservation projects and that breeding in captivity is, for some species, the only way that they will survive. The Parrot Society has been a lifeline for me and is far more than ‘a group of parrot breeders’. I’m certain that these opinions from the people in parrot rescue, were not based on personal experience as none of them were members, however I’m not surprised as I found many of them to have strong opinions on countless areas of bird keeping and most of these were based on very little fact and even less experience. Open mindedness and tolerance were not words I would have associated with these people, this surprised me as I thought the reason for a parrot rescue was to help the birds involved and not to squabble and score points with who had the most knowledge and who was right or wrong. I can


understand that some of these attitudes were because of the sights they had seen, it is easy to want to blame somebody but there is no single group of people responsible, often circumstances beyond anyone’s control cause people to re home their bird. Things finally came to a head with the charity when a new member made allegations that two of the trustees had sold a charity bird, a totally unfounded claim with no evidence to support it. This member had wanted to foster a bird and had already accepted and then turned down three birds for not being friendly enough. The trustees had agreed not to let him have another bird as his expectations were unrealistic, he then approached an area coordinator who offered him a bonded pair of cockatoos, one of which was his own bird, the other belonged to the charity. He was made to understand that they shouldn’t be separated but against advice he separated them as he only liked the female and wanted to return the male. Obviously this caused the male cockatoo extreme stress and the end result was piteous and prolonged screaming. When the trustees learned what had happened we attempted to take both birds off the new member, his response was to make these allegations against two of the trustees, not to the founders of the charity but on the charity’s Facebook page, knowing full well that this would cause the most


BIRD SCENE 35


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