Help save injured and orphaned wild parrots

We are excited to be heading into our “slower” time of year once again… Although we currently have quite a few parrots in our care, which makes things quite busy still!

To date, we have rescued 137 wild parrots this year. Many of those came in during our “busy” time of late Spring through late Summer. We had more injured adults arrive during that time than compared to previous years, along with the usual high number of young birds.

Once the weather begins to cool down a bit here, we get to start planning our wild parrot releases. Last month, we sent 24 Amazons back to their wild families in Pasadena, and another 14 in Santa Ana. I was especially excited about the Santa Ana release, as this is the first year we have been able to track that flock successfully. Our next release is scheduled for early November, and will be 26 Amazons heading back to their flock in San Diego. 

After the Amazons have left us, we are hoping to finally get our Conures released as well. Last year, our Conure release had to be postponed (we all know what 2020 was about, no need for me to go further into it). As a result, we have about 35 “extra” birds at the rescue. Add that to our 2021 intakes, and we are anticipating quite a large group to release! I am still trying to figure out exactly where the Conures are roosting, both in LA and San Diego, in order to properly plan for their releases.

In addition to our ongoing releases and daily rescue work, we have also started a new feeding protocol for the birds. The new food includes the same pellets and fresh produce as we were using before, but we now have a home-made veggie and grains mix which is fed to our entire flock daily. The variation of veggies, fruits, and grains have been great for both nutrition and enrichment. Also, cooking "bird food" has become a new official volunteer role. 

Some of our upcoming on-site projects include: planting trees and flowers, revamping our website, and recruiting more volunteers. Since we won’t be sending another update here until after the holidays, we want to send out our appreciation to you for your continued support- and we hope you have a fantastic end to this year!

Another Summer, another batch of rescued wild Amazon babies. If you’ve been a recurring donor for longer than a year now, you’ll know that our busiest time for intakes is typically late May through mid-September. Amazon babies come in first, at various stages of development, followed a few months later by the Conure babies. Our founder, Brooke, always jokes that the Conures are like a cute little bonus after all of the Amazons. Don’t get it wrong- Amazons are so cute when they’re young, but we get so many in over such a short amount of time that it’s just plain exhausting!

This year, we were excited to spend our first “Baby Season” working completely from our new facility. One of my favorite aspects of having young rescues in the new place is that they can hear (and occasionally see) the adults we’ve rescued this year. This is due to the proximity of our Rehab office trailer to the outdoor flights, and all of the windows in the trailer itself. In previous years, the babies were kept in a separate room and only met the other, older rescues once they’d moved outside to a flight enclosure.

Since early June, we have taken in more than 45 birds. Only a few of those were injured adults; the majority were either nestlings or fledglings, all Amazons. We have several years of feeding babies under our belts by now, but the volume always catches me off-guard! Luckily, it only took a couple of days to get back into the swing of hand-feeding, monitoring, and weigh-ins. Everyone is progressing quickly, and they get a chance to chat with other wild Amazons through the windows every evening, too!

Our next update will be focused on how all of our Summer rescues are faring outside, and the process we use to get them completely prepared to be released back into the urban wild. 

None of our progress would be possible without the continued support from you. We sincerely appreciate every single donation that comes our way, especially recurring ones. It’s definitely not cheap to feed, house, and care for this many wild parrots, so thank you again!