The stay at the veterinary clinic was upsetting to both of them; when I went to retrieve them, their backs were both featherless from being handled. Many dove species lose their feathers when they are handled or frightened; shedding feathers instantly is both a panic response and a gambit for escaping the grip of predators in the wild. Hawks and coyotes are often left with talons or mouths full of feathers as their prey soars away. When I got them home, I worried that the chill weather might be fatal to a postsurgical bird from a tropical climate—especially now that Gwen had large areas of exposed skin. In they both came; I made them warm and comfortable in a plastic-draped spare bedroom. They stayed in the house for two and a half months. By the time they had regrown their feathers, the weather had warmed up and we had become friends. Almost.
I moved them into the easily monitored Blue Butterfly Aviary. They no longer ran away when I entered their space. If I came in carrying some juicy mealworms, they would approach to within an arm’s distance. It wasn’t the first time that once-standoffish birds had changed their attitude toward me after being ill or stressed and closely cared for. My own feelings had changed as well. I took a real liking to this devoted pigeon pair. I looked forward to seeing them on my morning rounds. I talked, they tolerated me.
And then, a random accident. I was sitting at the kitchen table with the newspaper one Saturday morning when I heard Pop! Crack! It sounded like pistol shots. I ran outside and found no crazed intruder or smoking gun—just a torrent of water gushing from broken faucets throughout the yard. The city had recently installed an underground water-pressure regulator that turned out to be defective. The built-up pressure blew the lines on our property. Aviaries that had faucets in them had large and growing puddles, yet the birds—the ones I could see—seemed fine.
But I was concerned about another exotic trait of the green-napeds. They have an extreme startle reflex, and though they are pigeons, green-napeds flush straight up, like pheasants. Nest boxes must have soft tops lest the birds hit their heads or break their necks. An unexpected loud noise can be as lethal as a bullet.
I found Gwen dead on her nest, which did have the precautionary soft top. She had been incubating an egg. The pair had tried to nest many times, without success. I felt that I should act fast and raced to the house for a plastic bag. I put the body in the bag, together with the egg, picked up the nest box, and took them away. As I made my way out of the aviary, a crepe myrtle blossom fell on my head from the tree that shaded the aviary. I didn’t notice it until I looked in a mirror much later. I wish now that I’d pressed it between the pages of a book, as a reminder of those unpredictable early days. Every time I thought I had figured something out—like getting these birds healthy and acclimated—I was soon proved wrong.
I took Gwen’s corpse to the vet for a necropsy; we do postmortems on all birds that die, the better to understand their deaths and care for the rest of the birds. I shouldn’t have taken away the dead bird so quickly, but I didn’t know better. I didn’t think about the mate she was leaving behind. If he didn’t see her die or find her body or the egg or the nest box, how would he know what had happened to her? His reaction would be one of puzzlement and panic: Where did my mate go? When will she be back?
For the first couple of days after Gwen was gone, Lancelot kept a vigil huddled in the corner of the aviary where the nest had been. He barely moved. Meanwhile the necropsy report came back. There were indications of a fatal heart attack: Gwen had been startled to death. After a few days had passed, Lancelot moved outside under the crepe myrtle tree. Early one morning, I was jolted awake by a raw, heartrending cry. It kept up, growing louder and louder. I followed the sound to the Blue Butterfly Aviary. Lancelot stood with his head thrown back as if to vocalize a terrible grief.
The cries rose, ragged and sharp over the general avian din, and on it went, day and night. I needed to find another GNPP hen, as soon as possible. I thought about those first doves of Eileen’s that may well have perished from their separation. Lancelot wasn’t eating well and I was worried. It occurred to me that his call was only partially a widower’s lament; it was also a vocal advertisement for a new mate. I resolved to track one down for Lancelot.
I had no idea how involved such a search would be. Nobody had GNPPs—or at least no breeder would admit to it. After hundreds of phone calls and countless hours of research, I learned that there were only thirty-two green-napeds in all the world’s zoos and probably fewer than a hundred in captivity in private collections. Louis Brown told me that his pairs had died, but he made calls for me to zoos and other breeders. He tried all his closely guarded connections, with no luck. Even if someone did have green-napeds, it was unlikely that they would sell such a rare hen to a novice breeder like me. I was known only for taking unwanted birds. Outside, Lancelot cried and wailed.
Finally I was able to buy a GNPP hen from a breeder roundly disliked for his unscrupulous dealings. Doing business with him was a last resort, and he probably gouged us on the price, but it was worth it. Lancelot settled down nicely with his new lady, and I sat down for a hard look at our inventory.
I had been shocked to learn how rare the GNPPs had become, and now I wanted to know whether we had any other birds in imminent danger of disappearing. A friend who had access to the bird census figures on the International Species Information System (ISIS) gave us data on the location, number, and sex of birds in two hundred facilities worldwide.
I discovered that fourteen species living in our aviaries had become rare and were highly coveted by breeders and zoos. According to the census, few of these birds were in mated pairs. So I set about gifting some of the individual birds to capable people with the interest and ability to breed them. I gave away four species of doves—golden heart, crested quail-doves, blue ground, and Key West quail-doves. But I couldn’t bear to part with two species: the Victoria crowned pigeons and the GNPPs. They were so unique in the world.
Yet I felt that keeping them bestowed a certain responsibility. I should breed them to help keep their species viable. For years I had ignored the breeding side of my work—discouraging certain birds from breeding, even as I sought out mates for them—because I wanted to maximize space for rescues. I now had to play catch-up. Learning conservation breeding would be daunting. I’d essentially backed into everything else about Pandemonium; at least I was going into this new phase of the organization with my eyes wide open. Sort of. Beginning with my resolve to breed the GNPPs, our sanctuary would gradually change from an opportunistic mode—taking in diverse species of rescue birds as the need arose—to a more strategic operation. The old softy in me had always bought birds as companions for some of the lonely and alienated rescue birds. Michele the budding conservationist would have to become a focused aviculturist always on the lookout for healthy breeding stock.
It was a different, more severe form of bird fever. The mission became conservation, the compulsion more urgent. Both Browns had cautioned me about getting in too deep. Carol told me stories of bird keepers whose health had been seriously affected by the demands of a job that had no days off. They both suggested that I specialize—select a species or two that I really liked and stick to those. I remember thinking, But I do specialize. I specialize in everything.
My search for Lancelot’s new mate had pushed me deeper into a pretty exclusive brotherhood, since female breeders are as rare as some of the birds. My inquiries were often met with wariness or dismissal. Breeders and collectors are secretive about what they have; they often react with suspicion to strangers and novices. One key to gaining acceptance is to have successfully bred a species that is difficult and rare. Since even Louis had had no success with the GNPPs, I was probably setting myself up for failure. The only way to improve my odds was to build up my knowledge.
I’d have to find out what my GNPPs required for nesting, and how to tell they were “sitting” without disturbing that very crucial process. It’s always best that birds incubate their own eggs and feed their hatch
lings, but sometimes they are unable to do so in captivity or will abandon eggs. We never take eggs from nesting birds unless it’s absolutely necessary for their survival. Then it’s up to us to see whether we can supervise a successful hatch.
The Browns would be a superb resource when it came to the science—incubating eggs, hatching them, and caring for the babies. No one is better with eggs than Carol. When I visited, she was often on the phone calming nervous egg watchers from Florida to San Diego. The other component of breeding—the “art” of acquiring and pairing up breeding stock, which is Louis’s specialty—is an intuitive gift not easily passed on.
It made sense, then, to start with the science. I needed some basic tutorials on the process of incubation. I pored over aviculture journals and websites and, to my great excitement, found a hands-on course I could not afford to miss. SeaWorld in San Diego was offering a zookeeper’s course in egg incubation, taught by Susie Kasielke, well known in aviculture for her work on the conservation breeding of the giant California condors.
I realized during the first few hours of those classes that despite the difficulties, this new challenge was utterly fascinating. We worked with fertilized chicken eggs at various stages of development. Even though I had kept backyard chickens, I was amazed by the biological process that brings a chick of any sort out of its protective shell and into the wide, perilous world. The eggs that we worked with were “smoked”—rendered nonviable at various stages of development. We opened them and did egg necropsies to see and identify the progressive stages.
We first learned how to weigh the egg and measure the water lost through respiration as gestation progressed, how to “candle” an egg to assess the developing chick and locate its essential air cell within the egg, and how to tell if the baby is positioned correctly with the head under the left wing, near the air cell. We practiced how and when to turn an incubating egg as the parents would, how to use a heart monitor and recognize signs of an imminent hatching. We learned how to do an “assisted hatch” to help the baby come out if it was in trouble. What I had always viewed as commonplace seemed utterly miraculous. I headed home eager to get started, but I knew I wasn’t ready yet to tackle breeding the GNPPs.
Instead I began with plum-headed parakeets, for two reasons. First, I knew that the species was desirable and hard to come by. These stunning little birds from India have bright green bodies and distinctive purple heads. They had been very popular as pets because of their compact size, beauty, and gentle, endearing personalities. But their popularity had fallen off once the Wild Bird Act made it all but impossible to import more breeding stock. If I were successful in producing offspring, I could use them as “chits” in exchange for other birds that I needed. (At the top of my wish list was, of course, a GNPP hen.) The other compelling reason to try plum-heads was that they aren’t endangered, so if I made mistakes, I wouldn’t contribute to wiping out a species.
Our first plum-head had come from a humane society. Then a pair sent to us from another rescue group in Denver endured an incredible journey when a shipping error sent them to San José, Costa Rica, instead of San Jose, California. When they finally arrived, we named the weary travelers Costa and Rica. Boy, did we have babies. Adorable little purple heads bobbed in plenty of nesting boxes. I learned a good deal about breeding, made some excellent swaps, and kept a weather eye out for that elusive GNPP hen. I was pretty proud of my trajectory toward a more empirical, hard-nosed sort of aviculture—until I tripped over a heartstring. Again.
Sweetie had been at Pandemonium for several years, enjoying the company of several other coturnix quail I had added. I noticed that he was limping. When I picked him up, I saw a cut at the bottom of his foot. It wasn’t particularly deep, but it had gone unnoticed long enough to become infected. After Dr. Varner examined Sweetie, he was not hopeful. “These birds don’t do especially well on antibiotics. You can try, but I don’t think it will help. He’ll have to be on them for a long time.”
The course of treatment amounted to weeks of torture for Sweetie; he was confined to a small hospital cage and had to endure force-fed medicine twice a day. Soon even the extra worms I gave him did not lift his mood. The infection would seem to clear, only to flare up again once we stopped treatment.
Dr. Varner finally suggested that euthanasia was the kindest option; instead I took Sweetie to another avian specialist two hours away. The second vet’s alternative course of antibiotics and a subsequent surgery only made the quail more miserable. I’d convince myself that I should arrange for euthanasia, but every time I thought about life without Sweetie, I couldn’t take the step of hastening his death.
When finally he rallied a bit after the surgery, I was about to take him home from the second vet’s. He ate a mealworm that was in his carrier. It was a good sign. He picked up the second worm, but never got a chance to swallow it. He seized up and died quickly, without pain and right in the middle of his favorite activity.
When I had stopped crying long enough to speak, I ask the vet a question. “What is the life span of a cortunix quail?”
“Don’t know,” he answered. “They’re usually slaughtered when they’re young, so I have no idea how long they could live, but I’d be surprised if it is more than a couple of years. Your quail was a real old-timer if you had him more than that.”
He turned to leave but came back. “Sweetie was the first quail I have ever treated,” he told me. “We don’t usually get game birds brought in here. I’ll tell you one thing: that little bird of yours had such a dynamite and friendly personality, it’s wrecked my appetite for birds like this. I won’t be eating quail again.”
I tried to smile. When I got home, I turned to a quotation that was never far from my desk, from a book called Separate Lifetimes by Irving Townsend. Townsend was a renowned record producer for the likes of Miles Davis. He was also an author who wrote about the intimate connections between humans and their pets. The passage that has solaced so many grieving pet owners helped once again as I said good-bye to the tiny bird who taught me so much: “We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own, live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way. We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan.”
NINE
Mail-Order Bride
On those TV reality shows about animal rescue, the abuses are often appallingly clear—emaciated dogs and cats, skeletal horses, all delivered from their suffering by uniformed officers in shiny vans. Bird rescues are quite different.
Imagine a call coming in: “Dispatch, we have a lorikeet being fed birdseed!”
“Copy that, we’ll get an investigator over there ASAP!”
What average person would see cruelty—possibly fatal—looking at a pretty parrot with a dish full of seed? The clues to abuse, neglect, and illness in birds are often not apparent to the untrained eye. As we found with Amigo, a robust, good-looking parrot can actually be in serious danger from obesity. As a rescuer, you really have to know what to look for.
One day I received a call from a local bird rescue group to stand by for a possible adoption. They had received a phone tip about a rainbow lorikeet seen at the Bird Mart, an avian bazaar held every three months or so in our area in a large hall at the fairgrounds. Bird and bird supply vendors come from miles away to sell their goods at prices that are considerably below those at pet stores. The people selling birds are either small backyard breeders or brokers. Most accept cash only—and good luck finding them afterward if you have questions or problems with your purchase. The birds sold are sometimes sick and are sent to their new homes with few or no care instructions.
The rescue informant clearly knew about rainbow lorikeets. They are medium-size parrots, about ten inches high, native to Australia and a few smaller Pacific islands. Their colors are stunning: royal-blue heads with bright red beaks, green bodies, and a ruffled bib of scarlet
across their chests. Lorikeets are now protected in Australia, where they have long been marketable as pets. They’re pretty, congenial, and cheerfully antic. They subsist on fruit, pollen, and nectar, and their tongues have a sticky appendage at the end to gather their food from deep within blossoms. They are not meant to eat seed, except as part of the fresh fruits they consume. Giving them a dried seed diet can result in sick, malnourished birds.
The rescue group told me that they were sending a volunteer to the Bird Mart to have a look. If she felt the bird was in serious trouble, she was to buy it and bring it to me. They would put up the purchase funds if I agreed to keep the parrot. At the market, the volunteer found only one vendor selling lorikeets; he had two of them, from different lorikeet subspecies. The rescuer approached the vendor and pointed out that the lorikeets’ food dishes were full of seed and had gone untouched. The vendor brushed her off. “Don’t worry about them. They’ll be fine. They’re just not hungry—too much excitement here.”
She was not reassured. If the vendor didn’t know how to feed these lorikeets, he was unlikely to give the right feeding advice to any buyer, and the birds would die. One of the birds didn’t look too bad, but the other was in awful shape. His feathers were dull and he lacked the vitality and energy that is characteristic of lorikeets. It was certainly possible that the wrong diet had in effect put him on death row.
The volunteer had been given only enough money to buy one bird, so she pointed to the sick-looking bird and told the seller, “I’ll take that one.” As she was walking away with the lorikeet we later named Peeki, both birds continued to call to each other frantically. The bird left behind clung screeching to the wire side of its cage. Peeki pressed his head as close as possible to a hole in the carrier so that he could look at his former cage mate as he was being carried away.
The Birds of Pandemonium Page 9
