Exotic bird in my yard?

[Hayseed]

I would like to see a bird aggessive enough to chase a crow away! [img]/forums/images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

[egon]

Raven:

Egon

[8NTX]

I've seen mockingbirds chase crows and even hawks. No wonder it's our state bird. We don't like trespassers.

[Pat]

Chris, Decades ago my mother owned and managed a mobile home park in Pomona, California after moving there from Oklahoma and remarrying a few years after my father's death. A local pet store had a fire and several animals got loose. Among these were some parrots that took up residence in the tall pine trees in this older well established park.

Previously, crows were a terrible bother there, noisy, messy all over cars, etc. The parrots chased them mercilessly to the delight of the residents. The aerial combat was fun to watch but it was mostly crows fleeing parrots that stayed busy "guarding" the grounds from the incursions of crows.

My mom's second husband would sneak a shot or two at the crows with a pellet rifle and one evening a "crow" was sitting silohetted in the crotch of a tree cawing away. He shot it and it tumbled to the ground. He went to finish it off and it was a parrot. Parrots are good imitators.

He was just sick and tried to "herd" the bird into a box but it bit his stick in two a couple times. Eventually he got it penned up but was afraid he would be subject to mob justice if the residents knew of his deed. He called me and I mobillized a mission. Large bird cage, heavy gloves, friend with station wagon and we set off on the 125 mile trip.

I got the bird into a sock with the toes removed to control its flapping withoug loosing any fingers and took it home to San Diego. I treated the wound but was not able to do much for the damaged wing bone. The pellet had not stayed in the bird. I modified the sock to hold the wings gently but firmly and the bird could feed and even climb around with its beak and feet.

After a while I removed the sock and the bird could fly but not gain altitude. If released from 6 ft (the height of our fence) he would circle around the yard slowly loosing altitude till forced to land or crash in the grass. We hoped it would get better and could be released but that was not to happen.

I went across the border to TJ and bought a huge wrought iron cage for the bird and screened in the front porch. Usually lthe age door was left open and the bird had the run of the porch. There was a window between the kitchen and the porch which we cold leave open giving the bird access to the house when we wanted.

The bird was named Peanut because it liked that part of its parrot mix the best although a college chum called it Rodan after witnessing it getting into the "bone pile" after a KFC meal and cracking open the larger bones and eating the marrow.

It would peel and eat fruit from the fruit bowl. I liked peanut butter on my breakfast toast AND SO DID PEANUT. He would hop from the window sill to the table and walk right up and growl at me and try to take my toast away from me. I would tear off a generous piece and he would take it, step back a bit, ballance on one foot while eating the toast with the other. I had to hury and finish mine or he would be back to demand the rest.

Peanut liked girls and would climb up my wife's chair leg to get in her lap and climb up on her shoulder where he would preen her hair and make soft sounds in her ear. Guys... were lucky to get near him and leave with all there extremities.

Several years later after having had a frined "parrot sit" for us when going off on multi-week vacations, we moved onto our sailboat with no room for the huge cage. the friend had a couple parrots of her own and ours was "in love" with one of hers and the feeling was mutual. They fussed mightily when separated and literally demanded to be together all the time. They were not even close to the same kind of parrot. Heres was much smaller and colored differently. Ours was a double yellow headed amazon.

We gave Peanut and cage to this loving home.

As to the wild Mexican parrots in San Diego. They were unmerciful persuers of crows in our neighborhood. In the last few years prior to leaving (late nineties to 2000) thte crow population increased a lot. The parrots were a welcome force in regulating the incursion. They prevented the crows from nesting in the palms in our area.

Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Hayseed]

Good story with a happy ending! [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

[Hayseed]

There you have it!

[Hayseed]

Actually, now that I think about it, I have seen mockingbirds chase crows, too. Mockybirds don't take much guff off of any bird, do they?

[Pat]

DAP (Doug), The state bird of Oklahoma is the Scissor Tailed Fly Catcher which migrates her from the tropics (jungle) in spring and stays till fall. Not sure what constitutes a "micro-migration" but that seems like a long way to me.

If you refer solely to parrots thennevermind.

Pat

[DAP]

Pat .. Yes, I was thinking about the parakeets, cockatees, type birds yes. A number of year round tropic birds adopt a seasonal migration but stay within the tropic bands ... e.g. west indies to florida, central america to mexico, etc.

This pales in comparison to many many other migratory flyways that have species going thousands of miles, say Canada to S. America - very common.

I know there are quite a few 'accidentals' or stray birds endemic to the Bahamas that make it by hook or by crook to florida and even the carolinas. Storms, hitched rides ... many variables to consider.

One day a number of years ago, the 'rare bird alert' line reported an Anna's Humming bird in the Bronx at a garden museum.

If you have a field guide, you'll see that the breeding grounds for this lil tiger is a puny lil 200 square mile patch in Oregon and it migrates to central Mexico. It had to have gotten blown over to the eastern seaboard during migration.

...micro-migration ... for an explanation ... basically, any species of bird can embark on a micro-migration. These are just movements of sustenance, not necessarily really long distances such as annual migrations of species, such as your state's flycatcher.

Sorry to ramble .. I enjoy birds though.