ias@skuld.css.gov (Ethan Brown) (07/28/90)
There is an excellent article in this week's New Yorker Magazine which deals with parrots--breeding, smuggling, training, abuse, etc. I urge anyone interested in INDOOR or OUTDOOR birding to read it. They write about the birds behaviour in the wild, methods smugglers use to capture rare species, the depressing reality of the extinction of many species, and much more. Some of what they write is extremely disturbing: talking about the devotion between mated pairs of birds, they describe how some farmers in Australia poison birds that they consider pests. A dying bird's mate will stay next to its partner and hop up and down, flapping its wings, trying to get its mate to fly away. The article is not totally morbid. There are also stories on attempts to re-introduce parrots to the south-western US. Again, I strongly recommend you read this. -- --Ethan Brown --Science Applications International Corp. --Geophysics Division (ethan@esosun.css.gov) --San Diego, CA 92121 (619) 458-2676