FEATURE Mantadia National Park
Introduction “Anton, did you take that parrot cage from the attic? Sander has arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and is carrying two parrots for you.” It was the end of October 1993 that I received this telephone call from Wilma, my good friend Sander’s girlfriend. Four weeks earlier he had left for Madagascar on holiday and right before he left I asked as a joke if he could bring me some parrots. But Sander thought my request was serious so four weeks later I received my first two Lesser Vasa Parrots, totally unexpected, including export licence from Madagascar. This is how my Vasa adventure started. I didn’t plan at all to keep birds again in our house that we bought two years before. So I had to explain something to my wife who didn’t know anything about my joke, which ran a little out of hand.
At first the birds were housed in a cage in
the living room, which was not a success for several reasons. This standard square parrot cage was definitely too small for these approx. 35 cm long birds. Although they became tame after a while and even if they were allowed to leave the cage for an hour on a daily base, they appeared to be excellent flyers that really needed much more space. After a couple of months they managed to escape by forcing the clips behind the food bowls. They pushed out the food bowls, escaped and demolished everything in the living room that was accessible. At a certain moment when the piano was nibbled I thought enough is enough! Eventually a small aviary was built in the basement where the birds felt much more comfortable. Nowadays I own more than twenty Lesser Vasa Parrots in several aviaries and I breed them albeit with
BIRD SCENE 39
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