RIP Hunter

It's been good news, bad news lately. Monday morning, we awoke to find our trusty pack leader, Hunter, had died peacefully in his sleep: so peacefully he hadn't even disturbed his blanket. Heart attack or stroke, we guess. He was probably only between 7 and 10 years old - as a rescued street dog we can't be sure of his age when he first joined our happy band. Following so close on the heels of 2nd Lieutenant Wilson's death late last year, it leaves us with a somewhat dysfunctional and leaderless pack. Buster is now in charge, God help us.
On a brighter note, Klientjie (the Third Stooge), who I thought had disappeared for good, came sailing over the horizon with Mr P. What a wonderful sight - not least because I can now look Dr L in the eye and tell him all his birds are safe and well. Mr P is quite a strapping fellow whereas Kleintjie is a mere slip of a girl - a very distinctive couple in amongst the crowd. It would have been a tear-jerking sight: Little and Large swooping toward the aviary, greeting long-lost friends then flying off into the wide blue yonder - were it not for the dead dog at our feet...
Good news, bad news continued: On Tuesday, Mr Forestry Officer invited us to join him in a Q&A session at one of the local universities. A very productive exercise, all in all. Later that day he presented us with a badly injured barn owl: broken wing, fractured skull, damaged eye. Unfortunately it did not survive the night. By coincidence, Wednesday we bumped into the Audubon Society representative who found the bird. Not content with the extent of injuries sustained when it was hit by a car, the local youth were trying to finish it off with stones; Belizeans believe that barn owls are the soothsayers of doom, death and disease, which brings their average survival rate down from 'not great' to 'not a chance'. We have another busy season of orphaned baby owls in various states of disrepair to look forward to. Ah well, out with the soapbox and the bullet-proof vest and let's begin the happy task of eradicating a thousand years of superstition.

Busy doing nothing...

Forgive me Blogger, for I have sinned; it has been a week since my last post. I have spent the last seven days putting up Parrot Propaganda posters on every available notice board around town; thanks for the help from those unsuspecting individuals who didn't run away fast enough. It remains to be seen whether anyone reads them or not.
We received an update from the owl's new parents. He's now officially called something unpronounceable that means 'Night Eyes' in Latin - or Nox for short. We have been promised a written account of his life so far, as soon as young Bruce makes it to civilization to send his email. The good news is though, that Nox is doing well and has learned to perch on a human arm without ripping chunks off it, which is always a plus. Shame he didn't learn that level of restrain with his own arm...
I daren't tell Dr L, but the Three Stooges are now the Two Stooges. And I think the one that has gone AWOL has been led astray by Mr P, who is also conspicuous by his absence. Talk about the blind leading the blind - I hope they found some helpful flock-mates. The remaining two are behaving as a pair. They share their food and roosting space and fly in mad circles around the house and through the orchard together. Nox's new dad kindly made us a parrot nest-box which we'll put in one of the taller trees near the aviary. Yeah, okay, but you never know, oh ye of little faith. We did contemplate putting it in the aviary, but we are likely to get inter-species breeding if we did. They don't seem to be bothered with this prospect, but we are not about to encourage a psittacine melting pot in our back yard - it doesn't exactly complement what we are trying to achieve. Speaking of which, to round off a perfect week of achieving very little, we also acquired a baby agouti. Our mother-dog brought it back in her mouth, probably thinking it was a long-lost puppy. Of course now she will have nothing to do with it - thanks for that, Judy. We'll add it to our very long list of 'Things that Waste a Lot of Time' and hope it grows up quickly.

(BTW, want to know more about the Stooges, Nox et al? www.belizebirdrescue.com)

Up the Ante

My self-imposed Sunday chores include bleaching the parrots. Not the actual birds, just everything they may touch, or eat out of, or stand on. You can keep your fancy disinfectants; bleach works. And it degrades in sunlight (plenty of that here) and doesn't smell of lavender or 'potpourri' or some sickly throat-grabbing lemon-like olfactory assailant. Some clean-freaks advocate alcohol, but I believe this substance has a higher purpose. Anyhow, bleaching parrots gives one time to think (as does vacuuming or mowing the lawn) And my thought for the day as I was been bitten every 10 seconds was "what use are fire ants?". Wikipedia wisely tells me "not a lot".
Naturally we can't use any form of poison or insecticide; can you imagine the headlines? "Belize Bird Rescue poisons 160 domestic fowl, 12 parrots and thousands of wild birds". Who am I kidding. Headlines? Ha. You have to be a machete-wielding maniac or a politician to make headlines these days (yes, there's a difference). As a fire-ant killer, Ms DuPlooy (www.duplooys.com) recommends degreaser, molasses and warm water - but this acts only as a topical murderer, knocking off the top 2% of the nest. We tried dousing them in boiling water, but this offended my sensitivities toward these innocent helpless creatures. Only kidding - didn't really work either. A friend suggested white lime, but this will burn unsuspecting bird-feet and probably isn't too healthy as a midday snack. It seems to be one of the few battles we will not win in Belize (plus I am supposed to support the 'share the planet' theory). The best we can do is confound the enemy. Parrot food is neatly arranged in plastic chip baskets, with threaded bar and cabinet knobs screwed on for legs: these little restaurant islands live in a baking trays full of water. Regular cleaning of the tray is required as the crafty little beggars use peanut shells as boats. Honestly! Human feet are usually encased in wellies and the perches we position between the trees and the feeding platforms have to be moved regularly, or they become a route-march for the clean-up team. I once witnessed a parrot fall off a perch as it tried to pick ants of both its feet at once. I know it shouldn't have made me laugh, but I don't get out much.
I am reading about phoridae, a wonder-fly that eats fire-ants. Get this: the 'ant-decapitating' fly reproduces by laying eggs in the ant's thorax, the larvae migrates to the head and starts to eat it. After about two weeks, they cause the ant's head to fall off. The fly pupates in the detached head capsule, requiring a further two weeks before emerging. Now where can we get some of those from?

Thin ice? Where?

Well,we finally did it: the Three Stooges are officially free. Mr P was remarkably calm throughout the whole episode - even when his platform was invaded (yep, all that expense to install new launchpads and they make a beeline for the old one). Still, they had a good feed, executed a couple of victory laps above the house, and settled into the serious work of destroying next year's orange crop. Oh yes, I do believe the farmers when they assure me parrots can do that. Yep, if around 10,000 of them put in a 10 hour day for about a fortnight, I think that the yield from one particular farm may be affected by parrot damage. A financial loss equal to employing 3 men with shotguns and ammunition enough to shoot them all perhaps? God forbid we try and share this planet with anything. Actually, while we are exploring that rocky road to hate mail, it may interest someone, somewhere, to know that we have a mandarin-type citrus tree which is particularly attractive to parrots. Here we were thinking that our green-feathered visitors were just dropping by because we're nice to them, when it turns out that they've been demolishing these mandarins. (They're welcome to them, by the way, they're sour and horrible). But, wouldn't it be an interesting idea to make it compulsory to plant one of these for every 100 oranges - give the birds something to snack out on that didn't matter, leaving the real crop alone? Maybe even implement a decoy program where more attractive non-citrus fruits are cultivated alongside the oranges? ... Or maybe it's just more fun to shoot them.

Man v Parrot (match in progress)

I know I've been quiet of late. The truth is I'm a little embarrassed that my plans have been thwarted by one stroppy red lored parrot. January was supposed to be the big release of The Three Stooges (Bonnie, Kalie and Kleintjie) with all the media attention it deserved (well, 5 lines on our website at least). Unfortunately, every time I climb the ladder to open the door to freedom, I am dive-bombed by Mr P who regards the release door as the entrance to his personal fortress, and all those who dwell beyond it as potential intruders. I have to confess, I did not see that one coming.
However, not to be outdone by a mere bird, at this very moment our Chief Aviary Constructor is busy welding up two more doors complete with feeding platforms and ladder. Let's see Mr P guard that little lot. Ha, see, still the smart one. For now...

Black & White Owl Rescue.

On Saturday a family in the Cayo District called us to collect a black & owl owl which had been caught on their barbed wire fence all night. Unfortunately, during its time hung up he had chewed at its own wing to get free and removed all soft tissue down to the bone around the mid-section of the wing. We were forced to have the wing amputated - a really sad event for us, as a one-winged raptor is not an awful lot of use to itself. However, he is turning out to be a resilient little chappie. He's alert, he's eating everything we offer and as of today he can hop onto a low perch and feed himself from a tray. We are not sure what we are going to do with a flightless owl, his quality of life as it stands is not great. The family who found him are keen to have him live on their veranda, and with time he may lose his wildness and get some psychological satisfaction from the deal: we are certainly impressed with his tolerance for humans so far.
We are resisting the urge to call him 'Ollie' or 'Stumpy'. I am leaning toward 'Minstrel', although it seems you have to be British and over 40 to get that one.

Reptile-Birds: the missing avian link?

It is the general consensus of the household that we have a pair of Veloceraptors in our midst, masquerading as parakeets. Actually they are more like those little things that swarmed all over the girl on the beach, but no-one knows what they are called. Anyhow, I'll admit it, we created the monsters ourselves by allowing them prime position in the living room - master and commander of their 2-cage condo; one for sleep, play and launching at the sofa, the other for fine dining and ambushing the unwary. Like all parakeets they are noisy, scrappy and believe themselves to be 10-feet tall and bullet proof. With flick-knives. And Kalashnikovs.
Pinky & Perky (aka Kray Twins, Little BarStewards...) were donated by a local family some 6 months ago. They arrived pathetic and nervous in a shoe-box minus one complete set of wing feathers each, but were soon reveling in the joys of the BBR theme-park style open prison. They rapidly worked out that somersaults off the sofa didn't hurt and once on the floor, they could go absolutely anywhere!!!
Sitting quietly with my TV dinner on my lap and the omnipresent Chili snoring quietly under my chin, I realised there were 2 small green creatures tucking into my baked potato. Astounded at their impudence, I (and Chili) watched fascinated as they moved rapidly onto my ankle. Several chunks of flesh and much shaking of feet later, they divided forces; one moved onto that tasty bit of skin of the inner arm, whilst the other headed for the sofa and Jerry's eyeballs. Hmmm...
Ungrateful little barstewards.
They can't go into the aviary as they will bust through the wire in milliseconds (no, not on a motorbike, thank you) and a small-cage lock-down is not an option here (even though they more than deserve it). So it appears we are destined to be subjected to the nightly gnawing of the little green monsters until they can be permanently released. Of course, before that happens, they will have to learn to fly... Gulp.