If you haven’t seen my article in the March issue of Bird Talk about giving back through fostering parrots, be sure to pick it up!
Here’s an excerpt explaining why parrots may not be given up for the reasons you think…
There are of course, many horrible stories of abuse and neglect. Sometimes parrots are hoarded and kept in terrible conditions, locked in rooms and fed strange diets with no nutrition or beaten and injured for screaming or biting. Severely neglected birds may injure themselves because of their living environment or even self-mutilate. Of course we all want to help victimized parrots. However, there are also many more parrots that have simply had a bit of bad luck rather than abuse and just need a friendly home.
Some foundations that work to find homes for parrots are reluctant to call their organizations “rescues.” The truth is that most parrots which find their way to parrot welfare organizations were not abused birds that had to be rescued, but rather birds for which the owners could no longer provide homes. The list of reasons a parrot might be placed with a parrot welfare organization is long. Life changes sometimes make it impossible to care for a parrot. Long-term illnesses, job loss, foreclosure and many other tragedies can simply make it impossible to give a parrot care, attention or perhaps even a home. Sometimes people even buy parrots on a whim and discover that they are in completely over their heads and have no desire to do the work to manage the monster in their home. This may seem inexcusable, but it happens just the same and generally the parrots that come from a situation like this are not abused or “broken.”
Rebecca ur websites AWSOME!I love the parrots, and I hope the parrots find a home:)
Yay! I cannot repeat that enough to people. You don’t need to be able to “handle baggage” to rehome, and real rescues are actually rarer than is often portrayed.
So true! Thanks for helping to get this message out through such a mainstream pub. We’re still a long way from this view being the common understanding of “rehoming”. So many people think rehomes are not “pet quality”, which is really sad.
Both my birds are rehomes… neither of them should be considered a rescue. (I think I’ve referred to Stewie as a “rescue” in the past, but I’m trying to curb that bad habit.)
Thanks for all you do for parrot education!
We’ll get there!