PARROT SOCIETY OVERSEAS ELECTRO MAGAZINE
06 44
BIRD SCENE
ONE PARENT FAMILY ARTICLE BY: PETER COOK
I
n March 2002 I purchased 4 Orange Wing Amazon Parrots via the Parrot Society from Customs & Excise at Heathrow Airport. These
and other birds had been confiscated by Customs and Excise. The cost of the Orange Wings was £20 each, Blue Head Pionus £40 each and various Macaws from £40 to £150 each. I had the Four Orange Wings sexed and they
turned out to be 2 male and 2 females. I had no idea of their age at the time of purchase. Over the
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past thirteen years they have produced on average 3 youngsters per pair per year. The breeding pairs of Amazons are housed in separate aviary’s approximately 8feet high x 4 feet wide x 15 feet long or aviary’s 6 ft 6in high x 3ft wide x 9feet long with a shelter at one end. These aviaries are then housed in a large aviary 10 feet high x 25 feet wide x 75 feet long with part of it roofed over. Any youngsters or single birds fly free in the large aviary and paired birds in the single aviaries. The
grass in the large aviar the birds don’t seem to This year the two pairs June which was some 2/3 year. Presumably because had at the beginning of thi had two youngsters see pictu laid 3 eggs and about three w bird developed breathing prob hanging upside down in the avi
FEATURE ARTICLE BY: DOROTHY SCHWARZ I
n an ideal world birds wouldn’t fly off. Although fly offs are usually due to human error, bad luck or accidental mistakes can
occur. Through a mix of ill luck and bad judgement, I’ve experienced more of them than I should have. Here are some strategies that I’ve used over the last sixteen years to retrieve birds lost from an aviary, who are rarely hand tame. Our homemade aviary in six interconnecting sections survives wind and storm conditions because the wind has somewhere to escape. But mistakes in construction led to our first loss. The roof wire is stapled to a live oak. A section had worked free and a pair of wily Rosellas and a canny cockatoo had spotted the gap. All three went missing the same morning. An hour later, Perdy the Lesser Sulphur Cockatoo who is tame, flew down to a friend’ shoulder. Where the roof met the tree branch the wiring was doubled. The Rosellas were lost.
RETRIEVING LOST AVIARY BIRDS
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I blame the dog Archie and Lena were wild caught Orange winged Amazons in their forties. The second winter they lived here was too cold to leave them outside so I took them into the sitting room to live comfortably in a King cage until spring. Archie could fly and liked a daily whizz around. Lena had a pinioned wing. The dog opened the sitting room door and like most dogs didn’t shut it behind herself. Archie flew out into the corridor where unfortunately, someone had left the garden door ajar. Archie betook himself to the tallest oak behind the aviary. The temperature was minus 4. By nightfall he’d vanished. Presumably he roosted in the thick ivy, wreathing the oak. At first light he was back on the top of the oak tree shrieking like a banshee. Was he calling his vanished flock from the Brazilian rainforest? No way would he fly or crawl down to me.
Dressed for glacial cold, I visited every 30 minutes. At 4pm, light failing, he’d perched lower just within arm’s reach. I held out a peanut in shell. He grasped one end; I held on to the other, grabbed his legs and shoved him under my coat. I got bitten (not badly) but Archie lived another eight years before succumbing to a heart attack.
Greenman This Ring neck was a ten year old rescue. In my aviary he had a blue Ring neck wife Ariadne. I enjoy naming all the aviary birds. Although she was only three years old, she succumbed to a stroke. She remained in her nest box and Greenman fed her. She could not fly. I decided to visit the vet. So I netted both parakeets, and put them in a dog crate covered with a towel. Next morning I drove off without lifting the towel. The vet opened the crate – only one bird inside. I guessed what must have happened Perdy, my wicked cockatoo, who’d been in that crate the week before, must have chewed off the plastic holders on the food dish. Greenman had pushed the food bowl aside and squeezed through the gap. I expected to find him in the cloakroom where, the previous night, I’d left the crate. No Greenman, the window was open a crack. I spotted him later on the aviary roof, chatting to his wife through the wire. She had poked her head out of the nest box. If I approached within metres he was off. Les Rance, Ariadne’s breeder offered a solution: ‘Shut Ariadne in a cage in your end flight and leave the outer doors open.’ Each of my six flights can be closed off from the main aviary. For two days, no results, Ariadne wasn’t eating and Greenman, although he visited her, flew out at the merest sound of footsteps. However, I outwitted him on day two, when I approached holding a scary padded coat in front of me. Greenman spotted the approaching monster and flew to the back of the flight instead of outside. >>>
PARROT SOCIETY MAGAZINE: 21
PARROT THE MAGAZINE OF THE
SOCIETY UK VOLUME 49 NOVEMBER 2015
THE NATIONAL EXHIBITION
MAGIC MOMENTS AT PRAGUE ZOO
By Rosemary Low
CAPE PARROT IDENTIFIED AS A NEW SPECIES
By Allan Manning
HELP BIRD KEEPERS SHOW SEE PAGES 30 TO 33
BOOKING FOR NOW
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