Birds
at the National ZooBooks, Naturally
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph
Hill: A Love Story . . . with Wings. Mark Bittner.
2004. Harmony Books, New York. 304 pp., hardbound. $22.
Elsewhere in the Land of Parrots. Jim Paul.
2003. Harcourt, Inc. Orlando, Florida. 305 pp., softbound.
$13.
The United States' only native parrots—the Carolina parakeet and the thick-billed parrot—were shot into oblivion nearly a century ago. As if unwittingly to make up for it, people have helped several exotic parrot species to colonize the once parrotless urban frontier.
Parrots of all kinds are immensely popular as pets, and hundreds of thousands of wild-caught parrots of many different species were imported into the U.S. from about the 1960s until the trade was banned in 1993. Inevitably, many of these beautiful creatures escaped captivity or were released when their captors tired of them. Against all odds, some of the liberated birds found others of their kind, and once again colorful wild parrot flocks were brightening the sky and adding their raucous squawks to the soundscape, primarily in human-dominated urban and suburban habitats.
The monk parakeet is among the most successful, with thriving colonies in 12 states and in such unlikely spots as Chicago, Brooklyn, and Montreal. California is home to as many as ten breeding parrot species, and Florida boasts—if that is the right word—individuals of about 70 parrot species (out of a total of about 330 living parrot species), although most of these are not established breeding populations. Native to small parts of Ecuador and Peru, the red-masked parakeet, also known as the cherry-headed conure, now lives and breeds in both Florida and California, where San Francisco's population in particular has become the poster flock of the exotic parrot set as a result of the publication of The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill: A Love Story . . . with Wings and Elsewhere in the Land of Parrots.
Both are delightful, wonderfully written stories—one fact, one fiction—about the transforming power of the wild. (And it would be a miracle if the fiction were not inspired by the fact.) At age 42, Mark Bittner was leading an aimless solitary life in San Francisco while still trying to find himself—in his words, he was a "dharma bum." Then he lucked into a live-in housekeeping job on Telegraph Hill, where he discovered the parrots while idly bird-watching from his porch, and got hooked on them.
For the next three years he immersed himself in the lives of these birds, getting to know each and every one as an individual with a distinctive "personality." He carefully documented the relationships within the flock, tracked which pairs produced young, and came to understand the birds' behavior so well it was as if he were part of the flock—which in some ways he was. Eventually, he and his birds attracted the attention of the media and of a filmmaker, with whom he fell in love. As the book ends, the couple had purchased a home on Telegraph Hill, from which he continues to look after the parrots, albeit with less intensity. Finally, he's found himself, in a flock of wild urban birds.
In Elsewhere in the Land of Parrots, David Huntington is a somewhat similarly lost soul who fears the outdoors and spends his days writing deliberately meaningless poetry. Then his father gives him a red-masked parakeet. However, Little Wittgenstein, as David names his unwanted pet, so terrorizes him that he pitches the bird out the window of his San Francisco apartment. Remorse finally forces him to brave venturing into the urban wilderness—and beyond.
His search for Little Wittgenstein leads him to Telegraph Hill, where he meets a Bittner-type character and actually sees his former pet flying with the flock. David then determines to visit the natural habitat of red-masked parakeets. In Ecuador, he meets an American woman who is having her own adventure trying to study the rare parakeets in the wild. Naturally, they fall in love and end up living—where else?—on Telegraph Hill, where, like David, Little Wittgenstein "was now living in the larger world, part of a family, a regular member of society."
When Bittner started watching the San Francisco flock of red-masked parakeets in 1990, there were 26; today, according to his website, there are about 130. In Ecuador and Peru today, where they were once the commonest of parrots, flying in flocks of thousands, it is rare to see a flock as large as San Francisco's. Habitat loss and relentless capture for the pet trade have taken a huge toll on the species.
There are many sound reasons for discouraging alien
exotic species from taking up permanent residence here.
But perhaps because these beautiful birds are disappearing
from their natural habitat, it is very difficult not
to cheer about parrots once again flying wild in the
United States, eating the fruit of the exotic trees
we've planted, and being eaten in turn by exotic cats
and native hawks—all on the wild streets of San
Francisco.
—Susan Lumpkin
ZooGoer 33(6)
2004. Copyright 2004 Friends of the National Zoo.
All rights reserved.
