Flying right for rare parrot

The rare orange-bellied parrot (left); Ric Ressom monitors numbers of the bird at Codrington. Photo: Simon O'Dwyer THE call usually comes in April. They've been spotted fluttering through King Island, a small squadron heading across the strait. Numbering fewer than 150 worldwide, these little birds are rarer than the Siberian tiger. After their buffeted flight through the winds of the Roaring Forties, they scatter thinly along the mainland coast - as they once did in their thousands.

Some travel east to Gippsland, others gather on the wetlands of Werribee. A dozen or so fly west to the Portland area where Ric Ressom, having taken the alarm-raising phone call, picks up his binoculars and prepares to wander the marshes near the Yambuk wind farm.

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He is the eggman!

Parrots that have long nested in lighting fixtures above Bay Ridge’s “Dust Bowl” will be safe when Parks workers renovate the ballfield, thanks to a delay that has postponed the project until after baby parrots have hatched. Image: Bess AdlerCouncilman Vincent Gentile took Dyker Heights parrots under his wing when he postponed a park renovation that could have caused the worst egg accident since Humpty Dumpty’s infamous fall.

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Kakapo chicks move into the wild

Young Kakapo. Photo: 100% Pure New Zealand

Five rare Kakapo chicks - the last from the 2009 breeding season - have been released from their temporary outdoor pens, and are now roaming free on an island sanctuary in New Zealand’s deep south.

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Divided Brains Are Smarter

Cockatoo left-handedly devouring a daffodil. Image by Paul KiddThe two sides of the brain are responsible for different tasks in many animals. In people, for example, the left side is usually the language center, whereas the right side handles more visual and spatial chores. Now, research on parrots shows that this separation increases brainpower.

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A Fighting Chance

An ambitious recovery project is giving the Puerto Rican parrot, one of the world’s ten most endangered birds, a new lease on life.

Taino Indians called the Puerto Rican parrot iguaca, a name that captures the essence of its raucous call, a combination of squawk and car horn about as soothing as the sound of fingernails on a blackboard. “Once you hear it, there’s no other call out here like it,” whispered Tom White, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist with the Puerto Rican parrot recovery program. We had been huddled in this canvas blind for more than three hours, looking at the jungle through a tiny tinted window. Forty yards away, lashed to a broken trunk of a palo colorado tree, was a nesting box constructed of a PVC drum with a four-foot-long, periscope-shaped entryway. We heard parrots around us. Guawk, guawk. Guawk, guawk. The sound grew louder and then receded into the forest. “Messin’ with us,” White muttered.

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