I’m setting here working on the computer and I look over to see how Ozzie is doing. The parrots are a lot like small children, if they’re too quiet, you need to check on them. And when I look, Ozzie’s not in her cage! So I start looking to see if she’s jumped off on the floor and in need of rescue. Finally I hear a squawk and what do I see?

Apparently she’d decided to take a nap in the sheet I use to cover her cage. Maybe the world’s just a bit too much for Ozzie at times.

Or actually not.

Some of the folks out there may remember Willie the Hero Quaker parrot. For those who don’t, Willie’s a Quaker in Colorado and when his companion left the room for a moment, the toddler she was babysitting started to choke and Willie started screaming, “Mama! Baby! Mama! Baby!” She ran back in, did the Heimlich on the child and everyone lived happily ever after.

The Red Cross gave Willie an award recently and Fox News interviewed Willie and his companion. Just like my two, Willie was not about to say a word. But it’s kind of fun watching him poop on the arm of the chair.

Us bird folks are just a bit strange I guess.

No worries, this isn’t going to be another post about getting Iggy down off the curtain rod again. It’s about efforts to save the kakapo.

The kakapo is a large (about nine pounds) and flightless parrot. It also has lost pretty much semblance of an effective fight or flight mechanism. As you can imagine, once man came on the scene, a large bird that basically just sets there and looks at you would become known as just one thing, lunch. And so most of the kakapos went down European gullets.

Fortunately, New Zealand has begun a program to save the kakopa and there are now more than 100. In fact there are more than 30 chicks currently being raised. And an American zoologist has been providing medical assistance to the program.

Good luck to the kakopa!

Oncor Power, the folks that keep Dallas from going dark, had a problem with some Quaker parrots nesting in an electrical substation. So did they decide to kill them? No, they moved them. Seems pretty obvious to me.

So why can’t the people in Connecticut figure it out?

And who knew there was a backpack specially designed to carry Quakers? Great, now Ozzie and BB are going to want to be carried everywhere!

I was pointed to an Indonesian web site run by an organization that, among other projects, is fighting the export of wild-caught parrots. This isn’t a large problem in the US, most all parrots you see in shops are hatched and raised right here. Unfortunately, that’s not the case in much of the world. Parrots, and other animals, can be trapped in the wild and then sold as pets and display animals.

As much as 40 percent of the birds taken this way die before they reach their sales point and you can well imagine the level of care they receive past that. A number of the birds taken from this area are lories. I considered getting a, captive-bred!, lory once. They have a couple of interesting quirks that make them, shall we say, challenging pets. They require a liquid diet and as you much guess, it pretty much stays liquid all the way through, if you see what I mean. Really neat birds though.

In this day and age, there’s no excuse for getting a wild-caught parrot. Iggy for one, stands ready to replenish America’s cockatiel supply if I would just get her a male cockatiel!