Belize Bird Rescue: Parrot & Birds Case Histories

	January 2010
All change! Saturday 23rd January	Lots done today. We managed to put bands on 16 of the rehab birds. We also moved Chac and Chell into the second aviary with Prico and put Spike back in the flight aviary. There was a bit of scrapping as Spike tried to find space for himself, but by and large everyone seems to be happy with the arrangements. This meant we could put the bullied babies back into the baby-aviary without fear of Chac pushing them off their perches. We now have our house back again. Phew.
Chili's Ordeal (again) Thursday 21st January	Long story short: Chili went missing again on Monday and we recovered her from a shop in the village, clipped, but otherwise unharmed. A version of the whole story can be read here We will have to give some serious thought as to what to do with this bird. She is not a sensible rehabilitation candidate, and she hates cages, however large they may be. She loves to fly and seems to enjoy her half human- half parrot existence. The epsiode has taught us several things (most of which we already knew!) 1. Humans are not to be trusted 2. Ringing the birds is an excellent thing 3. Our aviary needs to be moved way into the bush 4. We need money to do this... please...
Joanna: another casualty of bullying Friday 15th January	Joanna has fallen victim to the tensions of the baby aviary and is resting in the house for a day or so. Chac and Chell - who used to be flightless bricks are now doing very nicely thank you. It's a common pattern for clipped birds over 1 year old. Our experience has been that the babies, once clipped, take an entire 12 months before they begin to grow in new feathers, whereas the 1yr + birds have a couple of moults a year, and some go into an immediate stress moult following damage to flight feathers. As a result, Chac & Chell are streets ahead of the babies, are now fully flighted bullies and need to go into the flight aviary and take their chances with Demon-Bird Timba.
New No-Name goes into the Aviary Thursday 7th January	After two or three attempts, he is a lot happier amongst the other birds in the aviary. He's in the smaller cage with the 3 other baby white-fronted and so far they are all doing well. There is some flight ability in all of them, but not quite enough to venture into the dizzy heights of the big house.
Arrival of a New White-Fronted (and he needs a name!) Monday 4th January	We received a confiscated young, male white-fronted today. He was clipped, unfortunately, and in need of some good home cooking, but otherwise in good shape. He will go through the observation period but should be a suitable candidate for the smaller aviary with the rest of the babies soon.
Pinky Leaves Home Friday 1st January	As a not so welcome new year gift to us, Pinky went awol. She has been hanging around the house with Perky since their release from the aviary in early August. I guess it had to happen sometime, and like all of our releases we miss them, we're happy for them, but we are always worried for their safety. If only they'd call once in a while...