the truth about birds

Two very special birds arrived from California this week… a Hyacinth macaw and a Major Mitchell cockatoo. Birds like Joey (the Hyacinth) and Honey (Major Mitchell) don’t usually find themselves in rescues, because they are very rare and fetch a very high price in the bird market. But luckily, a very kind couple did the right thing when they found themselves not able to give enough attention to their birds anymore… they handed them over to us (a noble thing since they could sell those birds for as much as half my yearly salary).

These two birds are going straight into our education program, meaning they won’t be available for adoption. We don’t want to advertise these incredibly beautiful birds as pets. Through the illegal pet trade, the Hyacinth’s numbers have diminished in the wild to the extent of being classified as endangered. Over 10,000 were taken from the wild in the 1980s alone, and today, only 2,000-5,000 of the world’s largest parrot species remain in the wild.

I love birds. I have two. Everyone in the bird department loves birds. But what people probably don’t realize is that we wish pet birds didn’t exist. Parrots belong in the wild. We take in the birds that are already pets, and will love and care for them, but in an ideal world, we wouldn’t need to. The parrot trade is no different than puppy mills, where dogs are kept in cages for the sole purpose of breeding more and more pet dogs… pet dogs that are so overpopulated that thousands are killed in shelters every year. The pet bird population continues to grow as well, leaving more and more birds homeless as they are very hard to take care of, and people are often ill-prepared. Over their head, people also don’t seem to realize that most parrots can live as long as a human. Did I mention that I’ve had my birds since I was three years old?

Birds have not been domesticated for thousands of years like cats and dogs. Even if raised as a pet, living life in a cage, wings clipped is highly unnatural for them. Pet birds are deprived of everything they were meant for, and though they can live a good, happy life as a pet, they usually don’t. These birds that we view as “pets” here in America are wild, native species in other areas of the world. Would you support the sale of eagles or a hawks as pets? It’s no different.