Polly want a home
Parrot workshop teaches responsibility and challenge of adoption
By Sarah Breitenbach - The Frederick News-Post
Bringing a parrot into the family just might be more challenging than adopting a baby.
For starters, there’s a five-page application form with a full page of prerequisites for adopting and a list of steps in the process.
Home visits with all household members and attendance at a two-hour lecture on building a positive relationship with your parrot are among the requirements.
The application warns potential parrot owners that “the lengthy process is nothing compared to the challenges of living with a parrot.”
About 30 children and adults attended a parrot behavior workshop presented Saturday by Phoenix Landing Parrot Rescue, an advocacy and adoption organization, at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Frederick.
Debbie Russell of Germantown, the group’s Maryland adoption coordinator, knows all about the joys and challenges involved.
“They are messy and you have to feed them twice a day and clean their cages,” she said. “They’re expensive and they take a lot of care and live a long time. They will outlive the owners they started with.”
This is often the case with families who don’t want the responsibility of caring for a parrot that was their parent’s, she said, and it’s often how Phoenix gets birds for adoption or foster care.
Russell said Phoenix has rescued almost 1,000 birds. About half have been adopted and half are in foster homes waiting for adoption. Foster owners, she said, “just have to love it and feed it for us. In adoption and foster care, they have to agree there will be no breeding.”
Sometimes breeders give birds to the nonprofit all-volunteer organization because they get tired of breeding. In one case, Russell said, “We rescued four parrots from a damp basement where they were in dirty cages with not much food.”
Before a bird can be adopted, Russell said, Phoenix has to be sure it is going to someone who loves birds and will take good care of it and be knowledgeable.
Russell said she has 11 adopted and foster care parrots of her own. “They are so much fun. Some want hands-on. Some don’t. Some talk and whistle and some don’t.”
She said parrots are intelligent.
“They’ll dance and they laugh when you do. They are little characters. They know how to interact with their owners.”
Her own love of the birds started with her 18th birthday when she was given a cockatiel. She said her whole family is hooked on birds.